Penitentiary
Definition
An institution built on the idea that isolation, labour and religious instruction could produce genuine penitence and reform an offender's character, rather than simply confining or punishing the body.
Related terms
- Auburn System
- Also called the silent system, a regime combining solitary night cells with daytime congregate labour under an absolute rule against speech, developed...
- Congregate Labour
- Work performed by prisoners together in shared workshops during the day, the defining feature of the Auburn system, as opposed to solitary...
- Indeterminate Sentence
- A prison term without a fixed release date, set instead by a range that a parole authority narrows based on the prisoner's...
- Panopticon
- Jeremy Bentham's 1791 design for an institution built around a central observation tower, letting a single supervisor watch many inmates who cannot...
- Pennsylvania System
- Also called the separate system, a regime of total individual isolation day and night, with solitary labour, refined at Eastern State Penitentiary...