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...
- 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...
- 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...
- Reformatory Movement
- The post-1870 shift to indeterminate sentences and earned release, applied at Elmira Reformatory from 1876 in place of fixed-term discipline.
- Separate System
- The formal name for the Pennsylvania system's total isolation of one prisoner from every other prisoner.
- Silent System
- The Auburn system's core rule, an absolute ban on prisoners speaking to one another in workshop, mess hall or yard, enforced through...
Explained in these topics
- Penitentiary, Pennsylvania and Auburn Systems (UGC-NET Unit VIII)An institution built on the idea that confinement, useful work and religious reflection could produce genuine penitence, first tried at the Walnut Street Jail...
- The Pennsylvania and Auburn Systems of Prison Discipline