Reading Prisoners: Literature, Literacy, and the Transformation of American Punishment, 1700–1845 by Jodi Schorb (review)

In her book Reading Prisoners: Literature, Literacy, and the Transformation of American Punishment, 1700–1845, Jodi Schorb offers an historical narrative detailing literacy’s effects on early United States imprisonment. Schorb succeeds in explaining the nuances of prisoner literacy and education while placing prisoners at the center of the narrative. Schorb also prevails in presenting prisoners as active participants in their literacy education, allowing them to define the agency and efficacy of their creative expression. Prisoners are then able to create subversive literary spaces and establish self-authorizing voices.

What makes Reading Prisoners especially compelling is this: the arguments that were made for and against prisoner literacy and education in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are the same arguments being made in today’s political debate on prison education. Despite empirical research that proves prison education helps rehabilitate incarcerated people and saves taxpayers’ money, some dissenters still believe investing in their education is a waste of money and resources.

Reading Prisoners is divided into two parts. In part one, Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century “Gaol,” Schorb argues that the literate prisoner was introduced to the public in the eighteenth century as a “new reader or writer, much like themselves” (7). In part two, Literacy in the Early Penitentiary, Schorb contends that prison reform in the early national period neglected to include a convincing argument on the benefits of prisoner education and literacy.

In the book’s four chapters, Schorb chronologically details the evolution of prisoner literacy. She begins in the eighteenth century when the only type of education prisoners received came informally by way of visiting ministers and community members who would bring “books, Bibles, and religious pamphlets to read with (or read to) condemned prisoners” (19). Punishment was public and swift, Schorb writes, so there was no need for literate prisoners. Ironically, it was the execution of prisoners that “triggered early America’s interest in prisoner literacy” (20). The public grew enamored by prisoners’ reading habits and criminal confessions became the primary literary source to satisfy the public’s curiosity. Traces of this public curiosity can be seen today in the publication of books such as Death Row Confessions: Execution Chamber Last Statements that includes the final testaments of 162 convicted criminals.

Following the reading prisoner, Schorb introduces the “writing prisoners,” those who pen their last narratives in hopes of gaining sympathetic readers and protesting their unjust sentences. Schorb “highlights how prisoners embraced the promise of print while dramatizing the perils that accompanied the spread of mass literacy” (50). Letter writing became a primary form of communication that allowed prisoners to write with a more assertive voice—offering advice to their children and spouses, for instance—and respond to family issues such as separation.

The purpose of punishment began to change from public spectacle to a more private practice, ultimately influencing prison advocates’ perspectives of the purposes of prisoner education and writing. With a particular focus on Philadelphia’s solitary model of punishment, Schorb analyzes this shift in the second half of Reading Prisoners. She uses prisoners’ published accounts and Pennsylvania prison records to reveal “a long and contentious struggle over the value of prisoner education” (15). Moral instructors failed to see how teaching prisoners to read and write would help reform them; authorities began pushing basic literacy to the forefront to illustrate that prisoners were not suffering from solitary confinement. Also during this time, prisoners began to write authoritatively about their incarceration and write themselves into the public discourse on prison reform.

In contrast to the Pennsylvania model of punishment, New York’s congregate model offers another perspective on prisoner education. Schorb uses prisoner writing to give first-hand critical perspectives of the reading and writing opportunities that officials claimed were afforded prisoners. Reading Prisoners is a valuable resource for students and scholars of American literature, American Studies, history, and criminology who want a deeper understanding of the evolution of prisoner writing and...