The separate system is a form of

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, corre ...

management based on the principle of keeping prisoners in

solitary confinement Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which the inmate lives in a single cell with little or no meaningful contact with other people. A prison may enforce stricter measures to control contraband on a solitary prisoner and use additi ...

. When first introduced in the early 19th century, the objective of such a prison or "penitentiary" was that of

penance Penance is any act or a set of actions done out of repentance for sins committed, as well as an alternate name for the Catholic, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox sacrament of Reconciliation or Confession. It also plays a part ...

by the prisoners through silent reflection upon their crimes and behavior, as much as that of prison security. More commonly however, the term "separate system" is used to refer to a specific type of prison

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

built to support such a system.

Early British prisons

Millbank Prison was a prison in

Millbank Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico and south of Westminster. Millbank is known as the location of major government offices, Burberry headquarters, the ...

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, B ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. It was originally constructed as the National Penitentiary and for part of its history served as a holding facility for convicted prisoners before they were

transported to Australia Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia. The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 18th century. When ...

. It was opened in 1816 and closed in 1890.

Pentonville Prison HM Prison Pentonville (informally "The Ville") is an English Category B men's prison, operated by His Majesty's Prison Service. Pentonville Prison is not in Pentonville, but is located further north, on the Caledonian Road in the Barnsbury ar ...

in the

Barnsbury Barnsbury is an area of north London in the London Borough of Islington, within the N1 and N7 postal districts. The name is a syncopated form of ''Bernersbury'' (1274), being so called after the Berners family: powerful medieval manorial ...

area of

North London North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshire. The term ''nor ...

had a central hall with five radiating wings, all visible to staff at the center. It opened in 1842 and had separate cells for 520 prisoners.

Eastern State Penitentiary: Basis for many 19th-century prisons

The first prison built in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

according to the separate system was the

Eastern State Penitentiary The Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) is a former American prison in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located at 2027 Fairmount Avenue between Corinthian Avenue and North 22nd Street in the Fairmount section of the city, and was operational from ...

in 1829 in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

. Its design was later copied by more than 300 prisons worldwide. Its revolutionary system of incarceration, dubbed the "Pennsylvania System" or separate system, originated and encouraged separation of inmates from one another as a form of rehabilitation. Common features of a separate system prison include a central hall, with several (from four to eight) radiating wings of prison blocks, separated from the central hall and from each other by large metal bars. While all the prison blocks are visible to the prison staff positioned at the centre, individual cells cannot be seen unless the staff enter individual prison blocks. This is in contrast to the

panopticon The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be o ...

prisons. The spaces between the prison blocks and the prison wall are used as exercise yards. When the separate system was first introduced, prisoners were required to be in solitary confinement even during exercise; as a result

-style structures were erected inside these yards, in which a guard post was surrounded by tiny, cell-like, one-person exercise "yards". By the end of the 19th century, these structures were removed in favour of more open—if communal—exercise yards. However, in certain prisons such as Pentonville, in

, even during communal exercise, prisoners were required to wear masks in silent isolation. Many of these separate system prisons from the 19th century continue to house prisoners to this day; moreover, the separate system continues to influence modern prison architecture.

Other elements

Designers of these penal institutions drew heavily on monastic solitary confinement to both destroy the identity of the inmate (and thus make him easier to control) and to crush the "criminal subculture" that flourished in densely populated prisons. Prisoners incarcerated in separate system prisons were reduced to numbers, their names, faces, and past histories eliminated. The guards and warders charged with overseeing these prisoners knew neither their names nor their crimes, and were prohibited from speaking to them. Prisoners were hooded upon exiting a cell, and even wore felted shoes to muffle their footsteps. The result was a dumb obedience and a passive disorientation that shattered the "criminal community." Hughes, Robert. ''The Fatal Shore.'' New York: Knopf, 1986. 518. The regime extended to the prison chapel, Lincoln Castle, which was used as a gaol in the early Victorian period, in which the prisoners could all see the chaplain, but not each other. It was also used in the prison chapel of Port Arthur, Tasmania, where many convicts were taken upon transport to Australia.

Early British prisons

Eastern State Penitentiary: Basis for many 19th-century prisons

Other elements

See also

References

Further reading