Two centuries ago, Pennsylvania became the center of prison reform due to Quaker influences which abolished harsh punishments established by English rule. However, conservative factions reintroduced cruel penalties like public hangings. Philadelphia prisons in the late 1700s were overcrowded and unsanitary, housing both men and women together, and jailers profited by charging inmates inflated prices. A Quaker formed an organization to provide food to starving prisoners, but it disbanded with the British occupation. A new Walnut Street jail had little improvement, with inmates trading clothes and suffering in the cold. By the end of the 20th century, the U.S. had over two million incarcerated, far surpassing other nations.

1. Two centuries ago, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania became the center of prison reform
worldwide. To understand how this happened, one must look briefly at the early development of
penal practices in William Penn’s colony. Penn, who himself had been confined in England for
his Quaker beliefs, abolished the Duke of York’s severe criminal code which was in effect in
other parts of British North America, where, among other offenses, the penalty of death was
applied for murder, denying "the true God," homosexual acts and kidnapping. Severe physical
punishments were used for what were considered lesser crimes. Pennsylvania’s Quaker-inspired
code abolished the death penalty for all crimes except murder, using instead imprisonment with
labor and fines. The law did call for severe penalties for sexual offenses: "defiling the marriage
bed" was to be punished by whipping plus a one year sentence for the first offense, life
imprisonment for the second.
Upon Penn’s death, conservative factions in the American colony and in England reintroduced
many of the more sanguinary punishments. As late as 1780, punishments such as the pillory and
hanging were carried out in public. An account of an execution that year related how two
prisoners "were taken out amidst a crowd of spectators – they walked after a cart in which were
two coffins and a ladder, etc., each had a rope about his neck and their arms tied behind them…
they were both hanged in the commons of this city.
Jails up until the time of the American Revolution were used largely for persons awaiting trial
and other punishments and for debtors and sometimes witnesses. In the Old
Stone Jail at Third and Market Streets in Philadelphia, old and young, black and white, men and
women were all crowded together. Here, as in other county jails in Pennsylvania at the time, it

2. was a common custom for the jailer or sheriff to provide a bar, charging inflated prices to the
prisoners for spirits. In Chester County, the English custom of charging for various other services
was also in force, e.g. fees for locking and unlocking cells, food, heat, clothing, and for attaching
and removing irons incident to a court appearance.
In 1776, Richard Wistar, Sr., a Quaker, had soup prepared in his home to be distributed to the
inmates in Philadelphia prisons, many of whom were suffering from starvation at the time and
even several deaths. Wistar formed the Philadelphia Society for Assisting Distressed Prisoners,
but with the British occupation of the city the next year, the organization was disbanded.
Because of the rapidly growing population, a new jail was begun in 1773 on Walnut Street,
behind the State House (later, Independence Hall). The new prison had the traditional layout of
large rooms for the inmates. Initially, conditions were little better than they had been at the old
jail. Prisoners awaiting trial might barter their clothes for liquor or be forcibly stripped upon
entering by other inmates seeking funds for the bar. The result was great suffering when the
weather turned cold. One estimate stated that 20 gallons of spirits were brought into the prison
daily by the jailer for sale to the inmates. It was also considered a common practice for certain
women to arrange to get arrested to gain access to the male prisoners.

3. The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. The U.S.
incarceration rate on December 31, 2008 was 754 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents, or
0.75%.The USA also has the highest total documented prison and jail population in the world.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS): "In 2008, over 7.3 million people were
on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end — 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in
every 31 adults."
2,304,115 were incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails in 2008. In addition, according to a
December 2009 BJS report, there were 92,854 held in juvenile facilities as of the 2006 Census of
Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP), conducted by the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention.
The federal government, states, counties, and many individual cities have facilities to confine
people. Generally, "prison" refers to facilities for holding convicted felons (offenders who
commit crimes where the sentence is at least one year). Individuals awaiting trial, being held
pending citations for non-custodial offenses, and those convicted of misdemeanors (crimes
which carry a sentence of less than one year), are generally held in county jails.
In most states, cities operate small jail facilities, sometimes simply referred to as "lock-ups",
used only for very short-term incarceration—can be held for up to 72 business hours or up to five
days—until the prisoner comes before a judge for the first time or receives a citation or summons
before being released or transferred to a larger jail. Some states have "unified" systems, in which
all the jails and prisons are operated by the state. The federal government also operates various

4. "detention centers" in major urban areas or near federal courthouses to hold criminal defendants
appearing in federal court.
Many of the smaller county and city jails do not classify prisoners (that is, there is no separation
by offense type and other factors). While some of these small facilities operate as "close
security" facilities, to prevent prisoner-on-prisoner violence and increase overall security, others
may put many prisoners into the same cells without regard to their individual criminal histories.
Other local jails are large and have many different security levels. For example, one of the
largest jails in the United States is Cook County Jail in Cook County (located in Chicago). This
facility has eleven different divisions, including one medical unit and two units for women
prisoners, with each of the eleven divisions operating at a different security level, ranging from
dormitory-style open housing to super-secure lock-down.
In the state of California, to prevent violence, prisoners are segregated by race, ethnicity, and
sexual orientation while held in county jails and in the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation's reception centers, where newly committed prisoners are assessed prior to being
transferred to their "mainline", long-term institutions.
In recent years, there has been much debate over the privatization of prisons. The argument for
privatization stresses cost reduction, whereas the arguments against it focus on standards of care,
and the question of whether a market economy for prisons might not also lead to a market
demand for prisoners (tougher sentencing for cheap labor). While privatized prisons have only a

5. short history, there is a long tradition of inmates in state and federal-run prisons undertaking
active employment in prison for low pay.
Some advantages of private prisons have been cited. These include flexibility, including the
ability to terminate a contract more easily and cost-effectively than it would be to close down a
government prison and lay off civil servants in the event of a decline in prison population.
Private prisons also have an incentive to look for ways to save on costs; for instance, Travis
Snelling of the Corrections Corporation of America notes that his prisons are designed to save on
labor, which represents 70% of the total costs over the useful life of a prison. This is particularly
important given that posts must often be manned 24 hours a day, requiring more than five
employees to cover all the shifts. Snelling estimates: "If you can eliminate one post by your
architectural design, just one, that'll save you well over $100,000 in a given marketplace, as far
as labor is concerned."
The three leading corporations in the private prison business in the U.S. are the Corrections
Corporation of America, the GEO Group, and Cornell Companies.
Private companies which provide services to prisons combine in the American Correctional
Association, which advocates legislation favorable to the industry. Such private companies
comprise what has been termed the Prison-industrial complex.
American prisons and jails held 2,304,115 inmates in 2008. Approximately one in every 18 men
in the United States is behind bars or being monitored. A significantly greater percentage of the
American population is in some form of correctional control even though crime rates have

6. declined by about 25 percent from 1988-2008. 70% of prisoners in the United States are non-
whites.[12]
In recent decades the U.S. has experienced a surge in its prison population,
quadrupling since 1980, partially as a result of mandated sentences that came about during the
"war on drugs." Violent crime and property crime have declined since the early 1990s.
As of 2004, the three states with the lowest ratio of imprisoned to civilian population are Maine
(148 per 100,000), Minnesota (171 per 100,000), and Rhode Island (175 per 100,000). The three
states with the highest ratio are Louisiana (816 per 100,000), Texas (694 per 100,000), and
Mississippi (669 per 100,000).
Nearly one million of those incarcerated in state and federal prisons, as well as local jails, are
serving time for committing non-violent crimes.
In 2002, 93.2% of prisoners were male. About 10.4% of all black males in the United States
between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison, compared to 2.4% of Hispanic
males and 1.3% of white males
In 2005, about 1 out of every 136 U.S. residents was incarcerated either in prison or jail. The
total amount being 2,320,359, with 1,446,269 in state and federal prisons and 747,529 in local
jails
A 2005 report estimated that 27% of federal prison inmates are noncitizens, convicted of crimes
while in the country legally or illegally.[19]
However, federal prison inmates are only six percent
of the total incarcerated population; noncitizen populations in state and local prisons are more
difficult to establish. The World Prison Brief puts the total number of foreign prisoners in all
federal, state and local facilities at 5.9%

7. By the end of the twentieth century, the United States had nearly two million people confined in
its prisons or jails, representing ten or twenty times more of its population behind bars than that
of most other postindustrial nations. Although these numbers increased more than fourfold in the
last thirty years, imprisonment in various forms has played an important role in the American
experience for more than five hundred years, helping to determine its history and shaping the
society. This history helps to explain the paradox of a country that prides itself on being the
citadel of individual liberty yet imprisons more of its citizens per capita than any other nation in
the world. It also provides a warning about the future, for even as the United States epitomizes
and sanctifies democracy, it continues to build a huge and growing complex of durable
totalitarian institutions. This massive use of imprisonment has made American society highly
dependent on prisons both economically and politically as well as socially.