In Defense of Flogging (15 page)

10
I'm starting to dream about the prison
: Ken Lewis and Aaron Cohen, “Horror of the Lash: 500 Lashes a Death Sentence,”
New Zealand Truth & TV Extra
, October 10, 1997, cited at World Corporal Punishment Research,
www.corpun.com/myju9710.htm
.

12
antiseptic on the caning wound
: P. M. Raman, “Branding the Bad Hats for Life,”
Singapore Straits Times
, September 13, 1974,
www.corpun.com/sgju7409.htm
.

14
prisoners outnumbers the US Marines
: “How Many Corrections Officers Are There?” Corrections Community,
http://community.nicic.org/forums/p/5894/11704.aspx
.

15
we incarcerated 338,000 people
: Justice Policy Institute, “The Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millennium,” May 2000,
www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/00–05_REP_PunishingDecade_AC.pdf.

15
“only a shocking level of failure”
: National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals,
Task Force Report on Corrections
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973), 358, 597.

17
may very well have bankrupted the state
: Frank Zimring, “The Decline in Crime in New York City,” Vera Institute of Justice, 2010,
www.vera.org/videos/franklin-zimring-decline-crimenew-york-city
. For comparison, the budget of the New York City Police Department is $4.4 billion.

17
foreign immigrants moved to New York City
:
The Newest New Yorkers 2000: Immigrant New York in the New Millennium
(New York: New York City Department of City Planning, Population Division, 2004), 8, 10.

23
death penalty still runs three to one
: Unpublished data graciously provided by Angus Reid Public Opinion, December 2010. Support for the death penalty among those who believe the death penalty does not deter crime is 73 percent. For related data, see
Americans Support Punishing Murder with the Death Penalty
, Angus Reid Public Opinion, November 9, 2010.

25
prison ships docked in New York City
: Edwin G. Burrows,
Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War
(New York: Basic Books, 2010).

26
“cannot possibly make their escape”
: Richard H. Phelps,
Newgate of Connecticut; Its Origin and Early History
(Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1876), 53.

30
more conducive to salvation and healing
: Thorsten Sellin, “The House of Correction for Boys in the Hospice of Saint Michael in Rome,”
Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology
20, no. 4 (February 1930): 533–53. The idea of solitary confinement likely came to Howard after he visited the Saint Michael's House of Correction for Boys in Rome. Founded in 1704 at the request of the pope, this institution appears to be the first to enforce solitary confinement.

31
be far more effective than flogging
: Negley K. Teeters,
The Cradle of the Penitentiary: The Walnut Street Jail at Philadelphia, 1773–1835
(Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Prison Society, 1955), 32.

32
“a simple idea in Architecture!”
: Jeremy Bentham,
Panopticon
(Dublin: T. Payne, 1791), i–ii. Bentham's lengthy subtitle reveals the scope and potential application for his system for total surveillance and control:
or the Inspection-House: Containing the idea of a new principle of construction applicable to any sort of establishment, in which persons of any description are to be kept under inspection; and in particular to penitentiary-houses, prisons, houses of industry, work-houses, poor-houses, lazarettos, manufactories, hospitals, mad-houses, and schools: with a plan of management adapted to the principle
. Much of this, as (ahem) Foucault would be quick to point out, has become commonplace today with such things as ubiquitous surveillance cameras. Though what Bentham could not know and Foucault failed to see is that, short of solitary confinement, there can be no complete and effective system of total control.

33
isolation, monitoring, and “apparent omnipresence”
: Ibid., 28.

34
“by small measure, by the gaoler.”
: Teeters,
The Cradle of the Penitentiary
, 132.

34
long Washington's political adversary
: In 1787 Procter hosted a going-away dinner for George Washington. The bill lists massive amounts of alcohol, more than two bottles of wine per person in addition to substantial quantities of “old stock,” beer, hard cider, and alcoholic punch. Each servant and musician received a bottle of wine in addition to pay.

34–35
15 of whom succeeded
: James Mease,
Picture of Philadelphia
(Philadelphia: B. & T. Kite, 1811), 164.

35
for only a third of those admitted
: Rex A. Skidmore, “Penological Pioneering in the Walnut Street Jail, 1789–1799,”
Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology
39, no. 2 (July/ August 1948), 167–80.

35
that from a sympathetic
account: Mease,
Picture of Philadelphia
, 166.

35
resolved issues of racially based gangs
:
Johnson v. California
, 543 U.S. 499 (2005); Don Thompson, “California Struggles To Desegregate Inmates,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, August 13, 2009.

36
the very nature of the being is changed
: Mease,
Picture of Philadelphia
, 168. That one of the first prison wardens, Mary Weed, was a woman, is noteworthy. She took over after her husband died of yellow fever in 1793, held the paid position of “principle keeper” for three years, and left on good terms in 1796.

37
“one to take care of the other.”
: Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace,
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
(New York: Oxford, 1998), 366.

37
Newgate Prison in Greenwich Village
: Ibid. Early prisons were often named Newgate after the notorious centuries-old jail in London. This scare tactic, prison commissioners hoped, would serve to deter crime a bit more.

37
“and a popular form of government.”
: Ibid.

37
was also clearly punishment
: Ibid., 367.

38
believe reformers' curative promises
: Mark Colvin,
Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs: Social Theory and the History of Punishment in Nineteenth-Century America
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 56.

38
“the bitter pangs of remorse.”
: Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, 366–67.

38
“the arts and practices of criminality.”
: Ibid., 505–506.

38
incarceration was driving people insane
: Atul Gawande, “Hellhole: The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture?”
New Yorker
, March 30, 2009,
www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande
.

38
to prevent prisoners from escaping
: Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, 367.

39
upriver Sing Sing in 1826
: Ibid., 367. Almost two hundred years later, both Auburn and Sing Sing are still in operation.

40
“fixed provision made for this purpose.”
: Bentham,
Panopticon
, 10–11.

41
found here together with the prisoners
: Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville,
On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France
, translated by Francis Lieber (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1833), 13.

41
“that Auburn is “next preferable.”
: Ibid., 60, 46, xi.

42
“wise advice and pious exhortation.”
: Ibid., 5, 51.

42
“moral power” of silence and labor
: Ibid., ix.

43
“agony . . . upon his fellow-creature.”
: Charles Dickens, “Chapter VII: Philadelphia, and Its Solitary Prison,” in
American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy
(London: Chapman and Hall, 1874), 114–15.

44
ordered Medley, a convicted killer, freed
: Medley, 134 U.S. 160 (1890). Unfortunately, there is no account of how Medley fared with his second chance in life. In its decision the court was well aware that many prisoners in solitary committed suicide, and “a considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane.” Those who survived were generally not reformed and, in most cases, “did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.”

46
imprisonment as a means of promoting rehabilitation
:
Mistretta v. United States
, 488 U.S. 361 (1989).

47
“an informant on other prisoners.”
: Alexander Cockburn, “Going Insane in the SHU Box,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 15, 2001.

48
novel idea to deliberately fill the state's jails
: Robert Martinson, “Prison Notes of a Freedom Rider,”
The Nation
, January 6, 1962. Martinson's group of Freedom Riders was arrested for integrating the “white” waiting room of the Jackson, Mississippi, train station. The governor decided to move the Freedom Riders from local jail to the Parchmann State Penitentiary. As a result, Martinson spent time in maximum security solitary confinement. Martinson, who remained unbroken by his brief time in prison, wrote, “It is impossible to prepare anyone for the humiliating, brutal atmosphere of even the best prison. There are no rules, no precedents.”

48
known in policy circles as “Nothing Works!”
: Robert Martinson, “What Works? Questions and Answers About Prison Reform,”
The Public Interest
35 (Spring 1974), 22–54.

49
“heart of the matter better than I did.”
: Robert Martinson, “New Findings, New Views: A Note of Caution Regarding Sentencing,”
Hofstra Law Review
7 (1979): 243–58.

49
by jumping out a Manhattan window
: Jerome G. Miller, “Criminology: Is Rehabilitation a Waste of Time?”
Washington Post
, April 23, 1989, C3. Sasha Abramsky,
American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 53.

50
kick the ball-encased person down a field
: An elephant ball is on display at the Corrections Museum in Bangkok, Thailand.

50–51
“ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.”
: Edgar Allan Poe,
The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
(New York: Random House, 1975), 258.

51
“literally buried from the world.”
: Roger T. Pray, “How Did Our Prisons Get That Way?”
American Heritage Magazine
38, no. 5 (1987),
www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1987/5/1987_5_92.shtml
.

51
for about eight years now
: From the Crime Report, cited as originally appearing in “A Letter To No One” in
The Beat Within
,
http://thecrimereport.org/2010/10/31/the-beat-within-a-letter-to-no-one
.

52
assaulted by other inmates or staff in the past year
: Allen J. Beck, Paige M. Harrison, Marcus Berzofsky, Rachel Caspar, and Christopher Krebs, “Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2008–09” (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, 2010).

53
and his life is in further danger
: Edward Charles, “Prison 101: What you need to know before you go to prison,” 2010,
www.wild-side.com/darksorrow/prison101.html
.

55
the wrong spot and the wrong time
: “The Prisoners of the War on Drugs,” HBO, 1996.

55
BAM! Prison
:
www.99chan.in/b
, downloaded October 18, 2010.

56
guys like me is inside the penitentiary
: “The Prisoners of the War on Drugs.”

57 “
to get you some money down here.”
: Ibid.

58
half of whom have multiple prior convictions
: Thomas H. Cohen and Tracey Kyckelhahn, “Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 2006,” Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2010,
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/fdluc06.pdf
. The nation's seventy-five largest counties cover about 35 percent of America's population.

58
even years before their day in court
: Lise Olsen, “Thousands Languish in Crowded Jail: Inmates Can Stay Locked Up More Than a Year Waiting for Trial in Low-level Crimes,”
Houston Chronicle
, August 23, 2009.

59
16,500 did not post bail
: Mosi Secret, “N.Y.C. Misdemeanor Defendants Lack Bail Money,”
New York Times
, December 2, 2010.

60
could receive even if found guilty
: Olsen, “Thousands Languish in Crowded Jail.”

62
adrenaline and the thrill of the crime
: Jack Katz,
Seductions of Crime
(New York: Basic Books, 1988).

62
similar criminals who don't go to prison
: C. Spohn and D. Holleran, “The Effect of Imprisonment on Recidivism Rates of Felony Offenders: A Focus on Drug Offenders,”
Criminology
40 (2002), 329–58; Joan Petersilia and Susan Turner, “Prison Versus Probation in California: Implications for Crime and Offender Recidivism” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1986).

63
into self-sufficient criminal creators
: Martin H. Pritikin, “Is Prison Increasing Crime?”
Wisconsin Law Review
, no. 6 (2008), 1049.

63
high school diploma do time in prison
: Bruce Western,
Punishment and Inequality in America
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006).