Seeking Liberty through Imprisonment: The Paradox of Prison Reform in the Early Republic

Mark E. Kann. Punishment, Prisons, and Patriarchy: Liberty and Power in the Early American Republic. New York: New York University Press, 2005. ix + 336 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $50.00.

Shortly before their discharge from the penitentiary in Auburn, New York, in 1830, convicts offered brief yet revealing sketches of their lives before imprisonment. Most of them came from impoverished, unstable homes; led hardscrabble, itinerant lives; and drank to excess. "W.B.," for example, had been a "rover" and "very intemperate." Convicted of attempted rape against a ten-year-old girl, "W.B." denied the charge but admitted that he was "well soaked with rum" when the crime allegedly occurred. "L.S.," also convicted of attempted rape, admitted that he had been "a very wild boy, in loose company a great deal, tending billiard tables, [and] nine-pin alleys." He described his education as "poor" and conceded that he sometimes got drunk and usually spent the Sabbath playing sports. Convicted of grand larceny, "J.G." noted that both his parents died when he was very young. Left on his own, he soon "fell into low vicious company," and became "addicted to stealing and excessive drinking." Female convicts at Auburn offered similar portraits of unstable, troubled lives. "Doll," a young black woman who served a three-year sentence for stealing clothes, recalled that she never knew her father and that her mother put her out to service at a young age. Soon, "Doll" recalled, she "went among loose women and became a prostitute." She "sometimes got drunk" and could not "read at all."¹

Criminals who offered such testimony posed a special challenge for law-abiding antebellum Americans. The Revolution eroded the public's commitment to patriarchal authority and created a republic dedicated to individual liberty. Yet public safety required that Americans in the early republic devise effective ways to punish and deter criminals. So how to reconcile Americans' love of liberty with their defense of public order and the disciplining of criminals?

Mark Kann's latest book explores this question by examining the goals and policies of penal reformers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Paradoxically, these reformers argued that penitentiaries defended the liberty of incarcerated criminals as well as of law-abiding Americans. Reformers, argues Kann, invoked an ideology of paternalism to depict wardens and guards as surrogate fathers, seeking the reformation of convicts. Success in this project allegedly inculcated a love of genuine liberty in prisoners, one based on "manly" self-discipline and self-restraint.

In developing these arguments Kann offers an interesting discussion of antebellum views of masculinity. Much as he did in his 1998 monograph A Republic of Men, Kann argues that masculinity was a contested notion in the early republic.² Most middle-class Americans, including reformers, advocated a "hegemonic masculinity," one that stressed a man's restraint of his passions and commitment to public order. Men who indulged in vice and failed to practice self-discipline were "unmanly," even effeminate. Kann contrasts this view of masculinity with one that condoned drinking, brawling, and sexual indulgence. Penal reformers devoted a great deal of effort to stamping out "counterhegemonic masculinity" in convicts (pp. 64–72).

Such reformers, argues Kann, were initially quite optimistic that prisons would rehabilitate most convicts. Indeed the first generation of penologists were initially so confident of their ability to reform criminals that they looked forward to getting these men's "retrospective" approval. Convicts, once "cured" of their criminality, would consent to their loss of liberty and praise the officials who imprisoned them (pp. 168–70).

Of course, things did not turn out as planned. By the early 1820s, asserts the author, a growing number of prison officials and reformers recognized their failure to rehabilitate most convicts. High rates of recidivism made for overcrowded prisons. Yet penitentiaries continued to be built, and increasing numbers of Americans...