Penitentiaries, Reformatories, And Chain Gangs
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Penitentiaries, Reformatories, And Chain Gangs
''Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs: Social Theory and the History of Punishment in Nineteenth-Century America'' is a non-fiction book written by Mark Colvin. It was published by St. Martin's Press in 1997. In this book, Colvin applies theoretical perspectives to changes in punishment that occurred in the United States penal system during the 19th century. Synopsis Over the past 200 years, the United States has put into service various institutions to punish criminals. Examples include: prisons ( penitentiaries), institutions for rehabilitation (reformatories), and a system where prisoners were leased to private companies (convict lease). Various social pressures influenced these methods of punishment such as economic needs, influential power politics, and the cultural beliefs of the time. Martha A. Myers, writing for ''The American Journal of Legal History'' says, "Multiple causal influences are always at work ecausehuman agency figures in each and every one of them ...
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Punishment
Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a deterrent to a particular action or behavior that is deemed undesirable. It is, however, possible to distinguish between various different understandings of what punishment is. The reasoning for punishment may be to condition a child to avoid self-endangerment, to impose social conformity (in particular, in the contexts of compulsory education or military discipline), to defend norms, to protect against future harms (in particular, those from violent crime), and to maintain the law—and respect for rule of law—under which the social group is governed. and violates the law or rules by which the group is governed. Punishment may be self-inflicted as with self-flagellation and mortification of the flesh in the religious setting, but is most often a form of socia ...
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Norbert Elias
Norbert Elias (; 22 June 1897 – 1 August 1990) was a German-Jewish sociologist who later became a British citizen. He is especially famous for his theory of civilizing/decivilizing processes. Life and career Elias was born on 22 June 1897 in Breslau (today: Wrocław) in Prussia's Silesia Province to Hermann Elias (1860–1940) and Sophie Elias, née Gallewski (also Galewski, 1875–1942). His father was a native of Kempen (today: Kępno) and a businessman in the textile industry. His mother was a native of the Jewish community of Breslau itself. After passing the abitur in 1915, Norbert Elias volunteered for the German army in World War I and was employed as a telegrapher, first at the Eastern front, then at the Western front. After suffering a nervous breakdown in 1917, he was declared unfit for service and was posted to Breslau as a medical orderly. The same year, Elias began studying philosophy, psychology and medicine at the University of Breslau, in ...
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The New South
New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a slogan in the history of the American South first used after the American Civil War. Reformers used it to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, to integrate more fully with the United States as a whole, reject the economy and traditions of the Old South, and the slavery-based plantation system of the prewar period. The term was coined by its leading spokesman, Atlanta editor Henry W. Grady in 1874 and sought to modernize the South while maintaining white supremacy through Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement. In the mid-20th century, the meaning of the term evolved as the Civil Rights Movement challenged segregation and white dominance. The dismantling of Jim Crow laws, economic diversification, and increasing urbanization led to a more inclusive and economically competitive South. This period saw the emergence of African American political power, the growth of cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Ho ...
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Reconstruction Era
The Reconstruction era was a period in History of the United States, US history that followed the American Civil War (1861-65) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the Abolitionism in the United States, abolition of slavery and reintegration of the former Confederate States of America, Confederate States into the United States. Reconstruction Amendments, Three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the Freedmen, newly freed slaves. To circumvent these, former Confederate states imposed poll taxes and literacy tests and engaged in terrorism in the United States, terrorism to intimidate and control African Americans and discourage or prevent them from voting. Throughout the war, the Union was confronted with the issue of how to administer captured areas and handle slaves escaping to Union lines. The United States Army played a vital role in establishing a Labour economics, free lab ...
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American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of America, Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by U.S. state, states that had Secession in the United States, seceded from the Union. The Origins of the American Civil War, central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether Slavery in the United States, slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding f ...
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Cult Of True Womanhood
The Culture of Domesticity (often shortened to Cult of Domesticity) or Cult of True Womanhood is a term used by historians to describe what they consider to have been a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the 19th century in the United States. This value system emphasized new ideas of femininity, the woman's role within the home and the dynamics of work and family. "True women", according to this idea, were supposed to possess four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. The idea revolved around the woman being the center of the family; she was considered "the light of the home". The women and men who most actively promoted these standards were generally white and Protestant; the most prominent of them lived in New England and the Northeastern United States. Although all women were supposed to emulate this ideal of femininity, black, working class, and immigrant women were often excluded from the definition of "true women" ...
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Social Stratification
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). It is a hierarchy within groups that ascribe them to different levels of privileges. As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit. In modern Western societies, social stratification is defined in terms of three social classes: an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class; in turn, each class can be subdivided into an upper-stratum, a middle-stratum, and a lower stratum. Moreover, a social stratum can be formed upon the bases of kinship, clan, tribe, or caste, or all four. The categorization of people by social stratum occurs most clearly in complex state-based, polycentric, or feudal societies, the latter being based upon socio-econom ...
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Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a number of basic constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth. Capitalist economies tend to experience a business cycle of economic growth followed by recessions. Economists, historians, political economists, and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include '' laissez-faire'' or free-market capitalism, state capitalism, and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition, and state-sanctioned social poli ...
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Crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Cane and Conoghan (editors), ''The New Oxford Companion to Law'', Oxford University Press, 2008 (), p. 263Google Books). though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a Category of being, category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence (or criminal offence) is an act harmful not only to some individual but also to a community, society, or the state ("a public wrong"). Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law. The notion that acts such as murder, rape, and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What precisely is a criminal offence is def ...
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Reformatory
A reformatory or reformatory school is a youth detention center or an adult correctional facility popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Western countries. In the United Kingdom and United States, they came out of social concerns about cities, poverty, immigration, and gender following industrialization, as well as from a shift in penology to reforming instead of punishing the criminal. They were traditionally single-sex institutions that relied on education, vocational training, and removal from the city. Although their use declined throughout the 20th century, their impact can be seen in practices like the United States' continued implementation of parole and the indeterminate sentence. United Kingdom Reformatories and industrial schools Reformatory schools were penal facilities originating in the 19th century that provided for criminal children and were certified by the government starting in 1850. As society's values changed, the use of reformatories decl ...
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Josephine Shaw Lowell
Josephine Shaw Lowell (December 16, 1843 – October 12, 1905) was a Progressive Reform leader in the United States in the Nineteenth century. She is best known for creating the New York Consumers League in 1890. Seth Low's biographer described her as the "grand dame of the social reformers". Early life Josephine Shaw was born in the West Roxbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts into a wealthy New England family in 1843. Her parents, Francis George and Sarah Blake (Sturgis) Shaw, were Unitarian philanthropists and intellectuals who encouraged their five children to study, learn and become involved in their communities. They lived for some years in France and Italy and then settled on Staten Island while Josephine (known as "Effie") was a child. Her brother was the Civil War officer Robert Gould Shaw. Career Josephine Shaw married Charles Russell Lowell, a businessman, in 1863. She followed him to Virginia when he was called into service during the Civil War. Lowell helpe ...
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Zebulon Brockway
Zebulon Reed Brockway (April 28, 1827 – October 21, 1920) was a penologist and is sometimes regarded as the "Father of prison reform" and "Father of American parole" in the United States. Early life Brockway was born in Lyme, Connecticut on April 28, 1827.James J. Beha, ''Redemption to Reform: The Intellectual Origins of the Prison Reform Movement, '' New York University Annual Survey of American Law, vol. 3, 773, 2007–2008. He married Jane Woodhouse (1828-1911) on April 13, 1853. Career He began his career as a prison guard or assistant warden at the state prison in Wethersfield, Connecticut in 1848. Brockway became a clerk at the Wethersfield prison by 23 years old. Later he worked as assistant superintendent of the Municipal Alms House in Albany, New York for four years. He was made the Monroe County, New York Penitentiary superintendent in 1854. There, he focused upon rehabilitation of the prisoners. In 1861, Brockway became the superintendent of the prison in Detroit ...
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