PENITENTIARY. A prison for the punishment of convicts.
There are two systems of penitentiaries in the United States, each of which is claimed to be the hest by its partisans,—the Pennsylvania system and the New York system. By the former, con victs are lodged 113 separate, well-lighted, and well , ventilated cells, where they are required to work -during stated hours. During the whole time of their confinement they are never permitted to see or speak with each other. Their usual employ ments are shoemaking, weaving, winding yarn, picking wool, and such like business. The only punishments to which convicts are subject are the • privation of food for short period's, and coofinement without tabor in dark but well-aired cells : this discipline has been found sufficient to keep perfect order; the whip and all other corporeal punish , tnents are prohibited. The advantages of the plan ate numeroixs. Men cannot long remain in solitude without taller ; convicts, when deprived of it, ask . it as a favor, and, in order to retain it, use, gene rally, their best exertions to do their work well ; being entirely secluded, they are of course unknown te their fellow-prisoners, and can form no combina tion fe escape while in prison, or associations to prey upon society when they are out ; being treated with kindness, and afforded books for their instruc tion and amusement, they become satisfied that Society does not Make War upon them, and more disposed, to return t,o it, which they are not pre vented from doing by the exposure of their fellow prisoners when in a strange place; the labor of the convicts tends greatly to defray the expenses of the prison. The disadvantages which were an ticipated have been found to be groundless. Among these were that the prisoners would be unhealthy; experience has proved the contrary : that they would become insane; this has also been found te he otherwise : that solitude is incompatible with the performance of business : that obedience to the discipline of the prison could net be enforced. These, and all other objections to this•system, are hy its friends believed to he without force.
The New York system adopted at Auburn, which was probably copied' from the penitentiary at. Ghent, in the Netherlands called La Maison de
Faroe, is foonded on the syetem of isolation and separation, as well as that of Pennsylvania, but with this difference, that in theformer the prisoners are confined to their separate cells during the night only ; during the working-holm in the daytime they labor together in workshops appropriated te their use. They eat their meals together, but in such a manner as not to be able to speak with each ether. Silence is also imposed upon them at their labor. They perform the labor of carpenters, black smiths, weavers, shoemakers, tailors, coopers, gar deners, wood-sawyers, etc. The discipline of the prison is enforced by stripes, inflicted by the SS sistant keepers, on the books of the prisoners; though this punishment is rarely exercised. The advantages of this plan are that the convicts ars in solitary confinement &trio g the night ; that their labor, by being joint, is more productive; that, in asmuch as a clergyman is employed to preach to the prisoners, the system afferds an opportunity for mental and moral improvements. Among the ob jections made to it are that the prisoners have opportunities of communicating with each other and of forming plans of escape, and, when they are out of prison, of associating together in conse quence of their previous acquaintance, to the de. triment of those who wish to return to virtue, and to the danger of the public ; that the discipline is degrading, and that it engenders hitter resentment in the mind of the convict.
See, generally, on the subject of penitentiaries, Report of the Commissioners (Messrs King, Shaler, and Wharton) on the Penal Code of Pennsylvania ; De Beaumont and De Tooqueville, on the Peniten tiary System of the United States ; Meese on ths Penitentiary System of Penosylvania ; Carey on ditto ; Reports of the Boston Prison Discipline So ciety ; Livingston's excellent Introductory Report to the Code of Reform and Prison Discipline, pre pared for the state of Louisiana; Encycl. Amerie. Prison Diesipline ; De l'Etat actuel des Prisons en France, par L. M. Moreau Christophe ; Dalloz, Diet. Peine, 1, n. 3, and Supplem. Prieone et Bagnee.