Module I
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, two American cities produced two competing philosophies of incarceration. Philadelphia's Quaker reformers built a prison of silence and solitude. New York's wardens built a prison of silence and labor. One harmed the mind. The other built an economic empire. Both created the foundation for the systems that followed.
Eastern State Penitentiary · Philadelphia · 1829
Auburn State Prison · Auburn, NY · 1821
The Verdict
By 1870, the Auburn system had won. Not because it reformed criminals more effectively, as both systems were essentially failures against their own stated goals, but because Auburn generated revenue to offset its costs and, at times, generate excess revenues for the state budget. Thus, the 'prison-as-industry' model quickly spread to every state in some form, and then, after 1865, exploded across the Southern US states through a system of 'convict leasing' which was effectively just slavery, just called something different, due to this being explicitly permitted by the Thirteenth Amendment.