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"Penitentiary"
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Fire in the big house : America's deadliest prison disaster
\"On April 21, 1930-Easter Monday-some rags caught fire under the Ohio Penitentiary's dry and aging wooden roof, shortly after inmates had returned to their locked cells after supper. In less than an hour, 320 men who came from all corners of Prohibition-era America and from as far away as Russia had succumbed to fire and smoke in what remains the deadliest prison disaster in United States history. Within 24 hours, moviegoers were watching Pathé's newsreel of the fire, and in less than a week, the first iteration of the weepy ballad 'Ohio Prison Fire' was released. The deaths brought urgent national and international focus to the horrifying conditions of America's prisons (at the time of the fire, the Ohio Penitentiary was at almost three times its capacity). Yet, amid darkening world politics and the first years of the Great Depression, the fire receded from public concern. In Fire in the Big House, Mitchel P. Roth does justice to the lives of convicts and guards and puts the conflagration in the context of the rise of the Big House prison model, local and state political machinations, and American penal history and reform efforts. The result is the first comprehensive account of a tragedy whose circumstances-violent unrest, overcrowding, poorly trained and underpaid guards, unsanitary conditions, inadequate food-will be familiar to prison watchdogs today\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
British Romanticism and Prison Reform
In eighteenth-century Britain, criminals were routinely whipped, branded, hanged, or transported to America. Only in the last quarter of the century—with the War of American Independence and legal and sociopolitical challenges to capital punishment—did the criminal justice system change, resulting in the reformed prison, or penitentiary, meant to educate, rehabilitate, and spiritualize even hardened felons. This volume is the first to explore the relationship between historical penal reform and Romantic-era literary texts by luminaries such as Godwin, Keats, Byron, and Austen. The works examined here treat incarceration as ambiguous: prison walls oppress and reinforce the arbitrary power of legal structures but can also heighten meditation, intensify the imagination, and awaken the conscience. Jonas Cope skillfully traces the important ideological work these texts attempt: to reconcile a culture devoted to freedom with the birth of the modern prison system that presents punishment as a form of rehabilitation.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
eBook
The Penitentiary Justice of the USSR: Peculiarities of Functioning in 1944–1956
Introduction. The activities of the penitentiary justice bodies in the USSR remain practically unexplored. Meanwhile, they were an important element of the mechanism of the Soviet state. The purpose of this article is to highlight the stages and determine the model of functioning of the penitentiary justice bodies. Methods and materials. The source base included unpublished documents stored in the funds of the Ministry of Justice, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court of the USSR and the State Archives of the Russian Federation. The fund of the Penitentiary Court of Chelyabinsk region, which is stored in the United State Archives of Chelyabinsk region, was also used in the study. When writing the article, the following methods were used: historical-genetic, archivalheuristic, source study, method of classification, method of historical description. Analysis. During 1946–1956 more than 200,000 people have been convicted by the penitentiary courts. The bulk of the cases (60%) were: cases of escape, refusal to work and self-harm, theft of state and public property, banditry, theft of personal property, hooliganism, robbery and plunder, and premeditated murder. The remaining 40% of cases were formed by the socalled “other” crimes. These included cases of counter-revolutionary crimes, crimes of security officers (military crimes), labor crimes, etc. During 1944–1956 among those convicted by penitentiary courts, there was a significant decrease in the proportion of prison staff and a systematic increase in the proportion of prisoners. Until the early 1950s formal performance indicators of penitentiary courts were lower than those of the people’s, regional, line courts and military tribunals. Penitentiary justice was dependent on the leadership of the penitentiary institutions. When considering cases, “simplification” was allowed: cases were considered in batches, in absentia. Results. Three stages of activity of bodies of penitentiary justice are highlighted: 1945–1947; 1948–1950; 1951–1954/1956. The model of activity of the penitentiary justice can be defined as “campanian justice”.
Journal Article
Reading Prisoners
Shining new light on early American prison literature-from its origins in last words, dying warnings, and gallows literature to its later works of autobiography, exposé, and imaginative literature-Reading Prisonersweaves together insights about the rise of the early American penitentiary, the history of early American literacy instruction, and the transformation of crime writing in the \"long\" eighteenth century.
Looking first at colonial America-an era often said to devalue jailhouse literacy-Jodi Schorb reveals that in fact this era launched the literate prisoner into public prominence. Criminal confessions published between 1700 and 1740, she shows, were crucial \"literacy events\" that sparked widespread public fascination with the reading habits of the condemned, consistent with the evangelical revivalism that culminated in the first Great Awakening. By century's end, narratives by condemned criminals helped an audience of new writers navigate the perils and promises of expanded literacy.
Schorb takes us off the scaffold and inside the private world of the first penitentiaries-such as Philadelphia's Walnut Street Prison and New York's Newgate, Auburn, and Sing Sing. She unveils the long and contentious struggle over the value of prisoner education that ultimately led to sporadic efforts to supply prisoners with books and education. Indeed, a new philosophy emerged, one that argued that prisoners were best served by silence and hard labor, not by reading and writing-a stance that a new generation of convict authors vociferously protested.
The staggering rise of mass incarceration in America since the 1970s has brought the issue of prisoner rehabilitation once again to the fore.Reading Prisonersoffers vital background to the ongoing, crucial debates over the benefits of prisoner education.
eBook
Escape from Alcatraz : the mystery of the three men who escaped from the Rock
\"Leads readers through the story of the 1962 Alcatraz Escape and posits what may have happened to the escapees\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Operation and Role of the Operative Body of the Hungarian Prison Service Headquarters in the Fight Against Covid-19 Epidemic
During the coronavirus pandemic the Hungarian Prison Service had to introduce measures that were unknown for the service previously and which had a significant impact on the daily duty of the staff. To adapt measures taken by the government for the prison service, the pandemic risks occurring during the special activities had to be modelled. The Operational Body built-up and operated in the Hungarian Prison Service Headquarters took several measures that ensured the framework of rules needed for successful protection. The virus could not enter the Hungarian prisons during the first wave and later on the statistics show more favorable infection and mortality rates among the inmates than in civil life. The current study presents the strategy of defense and the method of central management, as well as provides insight into the background of the decisions made. A koronavírus-járvány kapcsán a büntetés-végrehajtási szervezetnek új, eddig nem ismert intézkedéseket kellett bevezetnie, amelyek jelentős hatással voltak és vannak a személyi állomány napi munkavégzésére. A Kormány által hozott intézkedések adaptálásához, azoknak a büntetés-végrehajtásra vonatkozó lekövetéséhez modellezni kellett az egyes szaktevékenységek végrehajtása során felmerülő járványügyi kockázatokat. A Büntetés-végrehajtás Országos Parancsnokságán felálló és folyamatosan működő Operatív Törzs számos intézkedést hozott, amelyek biztosították az eredményes védekezéshez szükséges keretrendszert. A járvány első hulláma alatt a vírus nem tört be a büntetés-végrehajtási intézetek falain belülre, a továbbiakban pedig a civil élethez képest kedvezőbb fertőződési, illetve halálozási arányokat mutatnak a fogvatartotti statisztikák. Jelen tanulmány a védekezés stratégiáját és a központi irányítás módját mutatja be, valamint betekintést enged a meghozott döntések hátterébe.
Journal Article
Escaping Alcatraz
Engages readers with incredible stories of people who made daring escapes from Alcatraz. This notorious island prison was home to hundreds of inmates, dozens of whom risked their lives to escape captivity.
Book
Rehab on the Range
2025 Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize, Texas State Historical Association The first study of the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm, an institution that played a critical role in fusing the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, and public health in the American West.
eBook