Unit 6: The Prison System and Its Alternative
6.1 Meaning and Purposes of Prison
The prison is the state’s institution of lawful confinement — punishment, custody and correction in walls. Its purposes (the exam four): (i) custody (safe, secure holding of the sentenced and the remand); (ii) punishment (the liberty-deprivation that is the sentence’s substance); (iii) public protection (incapacitation while confined); (iv) reform and reintegration (the modern purpose: treatment, training and preparation for release). The prison’s built-in tension: custody and correction pull against each other — the institution built to lock away is asked to open futures.
6.2 Historical Development of Prison
- Before prisons: the body’s penalties (death, mutilation, whipping) and the exile-fines of ancient law; jails were only holding cells (the debtor’s gaol), not punishments.
- The 16th–17th centuries: the houses of correction (Bridewell — workhouses for the idle; discipline as cure).
- The 18th-century turn: John Howard’s prison inspections (the reformer who shamed Europe — health, separation, inspection); the penitentiary idea (penitence in solitude).
- The 19th century: the two great systems — Pennsylvania (solitary confinement, Bible and silence) vs. Auburn (congregate work in silence) — and their export; Elizabeth Fry’s women’s-reform mission; transportation’s end swelling the prisons; the reformatory movement (Elmira — indeterminate sentences, trade training).
- The 20th century: the medical model (treatment, parole’s rise), its 1970s collapse (the “nothing works” wave), the justice model (just deserts, determinacy), and the late-modern split — mass incarceration in some states vs. decarceration and restorative alternatives in others.
- Nepal’s line: the historic gaols of the Muluki Ain order (the kalimohar era’s fort-jails and the Bhadragol-type cells), the Prison Act 2019 B.S. (1962/63)
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