[lbo-talk] Re: Fwd: Exporting American values

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Mon May 10 14:21:32 PDT 2004



>From: Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>
>
>Very odd history. I don't know when America was ever regarded as "a model
>of civilized punishment." When the Quakers were throwing prisoners into
>solitary confinement in Philadelphia so they could reflect on their sins?

[Yes, Charles Dickens had some choice words on that topic in his American Notes (1842):]

... In the outskirts [of Philadelphia] stands a great prison, called the Eastern Penitentiary: conducted on a plan peculiar to the State of Pennsylvania. The system here is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong.

In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I hesitated once, debating with myself whether, if I had the power of saying "Yes" or "No," I would allow it to be tried in certain cases, where the terms of imprisonment were short; but now I solemnly declare, that with no rewards or honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day, or lay me down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness that one human creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree. ...

<http://www.people.virginia.edu/~jlg4p/dickens/amnotes/dks7.html>

Carl

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