Case Study: Studying The Prison

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1) What was your initial impression after touring the prison?
My initial impression after touring the prison was that it had so much information behind the artifacts that we now were able to see along our tour. The overall building architecture was extra ordinary and uniquely built. The building was pretty grand considering the fact that this was a prison dating back to the early 1800’s. Surprisingly the solitary confinement does not look as small as I would have expected it. The grand scheme of things flowed, it definitely looked like photo we see in history books about the earliest prisons. The court yard was the part that made everything so surreal, it really was closed in by these high thick stone walls. The prison was a great touring place because the up keep of the building …show more content…

However I feel like overtime, they realized that they were not capable of keeping everything under control. So they started using solitary confinement to punish individuals who did something that they deemed wrong. The Penitentiary was built to cause prisoners display penitence or regret. It was not built to punish, but was more so used as a form of public humiliation. The hospital within the prison was one of the greatest of that time. The doctors were so skilled that even the staff who worked in the prisons would have themselves evaluated there. The fact that there were lots of activities for the inmates to participate in tell me that they were not being punished once in the prison. The idea was that they would pay back the time for their crimes, and only if they did something to go against the rules of the prison would they be isolated. Back in the early 1800’s they were not able to understand the harsh effects of isolating individuals for long periods of time. Finally the fact that there was no use of life in prison, proves that they were intended to be rehabilitated and not

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