Penitence: Eleven Thousand Words [justin]

Eastern State Penitentiary, located in Philadelphia, has stonewalls 625 feet wide and 30 feet tall–it reminds one of a gothic castle. The prison operated for 142 years (1829-1971) and in 1994, after more than two decades of unsuccessfully trying to redevelop the land, Eastern State had its first season of regular guided interpretative tours. Its walls housed intimates ranging from pig thieves to murderers to famous mobsters, such as Al “Scarface” Capone.

Eastern State was unique to its day: its true warden was Solitude, its head guard, Silence. The psychological framework was a mixture of prison reform, Enlightenment thinking, and Quaker theology. The philosophy was that all people are inherently good and have an inner light in them, an instinct to behave rightly. This optimistic mindset, at best, points to the Image of God in everyone; at worst, it is blasphemy in regards to original sin in humans. The power’s that be at the prison thought that severe isolation, from everyone including family, the culture around them, even others at the prison, would facilitate inner spiritual reflection that would make the inmate truly penitent.

This “directed” penitence had mixed reviews. Some inmates, as they reentered the vast, real world, went insane after leaving the forced sensory/social deprivation of the prison.

From Alexis de Tocqueville (1831)

Thrown into solitude... [the prisoner] reflects. Placed alone, in view of his crime, he learns to hate it; and if his soul be not yet surfeited with crime, and thus have lost all taste for any thing better, it is in solitude, where remorse will come to assail him. Can there be a combination more powerful for reformation than that of a prison which hands over the prisoner to all the trials of solitude, leads him through reflection to remorse, through religion to hope; makes him industrious by the burden of idleness?

From Charles Dickens (1842)

In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who designed this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentleman who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing... 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 it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment in which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.