THE HISTORY OF INSTITUTIONAL CORRECTIONS

Imprisonment as a punishment was rarely used before the end of the Middle Ages. Before then, most of the Western world was dominated by the notion that prisons should be used to contain people, not to punish them. It was the Dutch who in the mid-sixteenth century constructed the first prisons to be used for the purpose of " correcting" wrongdoers in " work houses."

The Workhouse Movement

Amsterdam built one workhouse (tuchthuis, literally " house of compulsory ref­ormation" ) for men and one for women. The men ground wood into sawdust; the women spun yarn. Two purposes were foremost in the minds of the reformers who created the workhouses: Useful labor was more humane and less degrading than barbaric punishments, and it was also more beneficial for the common good to put offenders to work. (See the Criminal Justice in Action box.)

The English, with their close commercial and intellectual ties to Holland, es­tablished their first workhouse at about the same time at the old Bridewell Castle in London. Many other Bridewells were subsequently opened in England.

As social scientists George Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer have demonstrated, the profit motive always played a significant role in devising punishments; witness the Romans who put prisoners to work in mines and rowing on galleys.

Early houses of correction did not replace other punishments entirely. Brutal public executions, a mark of the Middle Ages, continued to exist. Persons sen­tenced to death were hanged, burned at the stake, drawn and quartered, disem­boweled, boiled, broken on the wheel, stoned to death, impaled, drowned, pressed to death in spiked containers, and torn by red-hot tongs. Noncapital punishments were also marked by extreme cruelty: Prisoners were branded, dis­membered, flogged, and tortured by specially designed instruments. By those standards, the Dutch and English houses of correction were humane alterna­tives.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), the English began to ex­periment with additional forms of punishment which the Queen characterized as " more merciful." In 1598, galley slavery (the ancient Roman punishment) was introduced. Slave galleys were also maintained by France, Spain, Denmark, and other European countries well into the eighteenth century. Conditions on the galleys were anything but merciful. Chained to crowded benches, exposed to all kinds of weather, whipped by brutal overseers, and fed on harsh rations, gal­ley slaves often welcomed death. Nor did the Bridewells measure up to expecta­tions. Designed to accommodate, " repress, " and reform " the idle and sturdy vag­abond and common strumpet, " they could not handle the armies of social failures assigned to them. Soon these institutions turned into overcrowded slave-labor camps in which convict labor contributed to the wealth of the rulers of the countries.

To deal with the overflow of prisoners, the English introduced prison hulks, decommissioned and deteriorated warships that were converted into prisons, most of which were docked in the River Thames. By the 1840s, the British gov­ernment had about twelve hulks that housed up to 4, 000 inmates. These hulks were overcrowded, unsanitary places of confinement, with high death rates due to communicable diseases. When prison ships were used during times of war

American War of Independence, Civil War, World War II) and emergency

Northern Ireland), these terrible conditions led the world to outlaw imprison­ment on ships for prisoners of war—but not for convicts.10 Recently, in fact, New York City has commissioned a fleet of five ships to house convicts.

England (and France) devised yet another form of punishment that was im­portant to the development of the New World. In the eighteenth century, English convicts were sentenced to be " transported" to the colonies. Virginia, Georgia, and other southern colonies received many convicts who labored to develop towns and plantations. After the American colonies won their independence, England transported convicts to Australia."

IX. Определите грамматическое время и залог всех глаголов в последнем абзаце.

Вариант № 2

I. Заполните таблицу, поставив предложения в соответствующие времена пассивного залога:

Время	Предложение	Обстоятельство	Перевод
Present Simple	Cross-examining is held before a jury.	twice a week.
Past Simple		an hour ago.
Future Simple		in the morning.
Present Continuous		now.
Past Continuous		when I came into the room.
Present Perfect		just.
Past Perfect		before the bell rang.
Future Perfect		by 12 o’clock.

A new case is explained

II. Распределите предложения на 2 группы:

3) предложения в Active Voice;

4) предложения в Passive Voice;

Определите время каждого предложения. Предложения переведите:

1. She was sentenced to two concurrent ten-year prison sentences. 2. You will teach Law next year. 3. You will be taught Law next year. 4. But reform has been difficult to achieve. 5. I am being waited for. 6. They helped me a lot. 7. She is laughed at. 8. They were helped a lot. 9. The documents haven’t been typed yet. 10. I interviewed some people to the job. 11. The appellate court is required to hear the case.12. The reporter was given 20 minutes. 13. I am told nothing. 14. They take the group by force. 15. We have such laws. 16. She told her nothing.

 

III. Вставьте can, may или must в нужной форме:

1. A fool may ask more questions that a wise man … answer. 2. … you help me with this case? – Of course, I …. 3. Jack … work for two hours without a rest. 5. You … prepare every day. 6. We … work at our supervision systematically. 7. One … observe traffic rules. 8. … I smoke here? 9. You … call on me if you need my help.

IV. Сделайте предложения отрицательными и вопросительными:

1. He can help us in this case. 2. She could work very fast. 3. We must go now. 4. You must consult a lawyer. 5. She may take my book. 6. You may follow my advice.

 

V. Подчеркните модальные глаголы и их эквиваленты. Предложения переведите:

1. We’ll have to wait for a solicitor. 2. I was to do this work. 3. May I use your phone? 4. You must not smoke so much. 5. She was and remains a riddle to me. She may not be a riddle to you. 6. He ought never to have married a woman 18 years younger than himself. 7. You should be more careful. 8. What am I to do? 9. Why should I do it? 10. It couldn’t be true. 11. You ought to say a word or two about yourself. 12. He may have been in the court for about two hours. 13. We worked that land for maybe a hundred years. 14. You should consult a lawyer. 15. What a pity you have to go now. 16. Am I to come tomorrow? 17. I’m afraid I must be off. 18. I don’t see why we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

VI. Переведите, обращая внимание на разные функции глагола to be. Глагол to be подчеркните:

1. Erik says that you may be coming to New York. 2. We are to go there tonight. 3. Where is he to be found? 4. What were you doing at that time? 5. He was not answered. 6. He may be ill. 7. They are in the next room. 8. My barrister says I am to leave alone. 9. She was my manager. 10. We are to wait for them at the entrance. 11. What is to become of him? 12. I haven’t been given a chance to explain. 13. We were told some interesting news. 14. Peter is busy. 15. I am telling you the truth.

VII. Переведите, обращая внимание на разные функции глагола to have:

1. He had his papers seen. 2. Let’s have a smoke in the corridor. 3. She has no time for me. 4. You have to go to the federal magistrates. 5. Where have you been since last Monday? 6. I have known him for many years. 7. Those two had not spoken to each other for three days and were in a state of rage. 8. Did you have to walk all the way home? 9. They will have to compensate for your losses. 10. I had breakfast at home. 11. She has not information on economic crimes. 12. She knows what she has to do.

VIII. Переведите текст, выписав слова юридической тематики.

The Penitentiary Movement

Jails for the detention of persons pending trial or execution of sentence are an ancient institution, in England dating at least to 1166, when Henry II ordered their construction. By the seventeenth century, English jails increasingly housed convicted offenders and drunks. It was that institution which the early settlers brought with them to the northern and southern colonies. The jails at York Vil­lage, Maine (1653), and Williamsburg, Virginia (1701), are still in place and may be visited.

Philadelphia's Walnut Street Jail played a crucial role in the history of correc­tions. William Penn's " Great Law" of December 4, 1682, provided for the estab­lishment of houses of correction as an alternative to corporal and capital punish­ment in Pennsylvania. (Penn's law retained capital punishment and whipping for the more serious offenses.) After independence, Pennsylvania continued to follow the liberal ideas of William Penn. In Philadelphia, the physician William Rush took up the cause of penal reform with his work, An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishment upon Criminals (1787). Rush helped organize the Pennsyl­vania Society for the Abolition of Slavery and was instrumental in the creation of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (1787). As a result of Rush's work, and consistent with the Quaker idea of " redemption - through penitence, " a small extension called the penitentiary wing was added to the Walnut Street Jail. The penitentiary was born.

The idea of the penitentiary was simple enough: Like medieval monks in their monastery cells, convicts were to do penance in places designed for that purpose. The penitentiary wing was used to house prisoners in solitary confine­ment, for even at work prisoners were not allowed to communicate with each other.

The Quaker idea of redemption through labor and religious reflection, instead of capital and corporal punishment, seemed persuasive. Moreover, for a few years after the Walnut Street penitentiary wing was opened, the crime rate in Philadelphia appeared to drop. New York (1791), New Jersey (1798), Virginia (1800), Kentucky (1800), and later other states adopted the penitentiary concept and reduced the use of capital punishment.

But on Walnut Street in Philadelphia reality looked different. Barely a decade after the penitentiary wing had been inaugurated, the visiting committee of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons reported " idle­ness, dirt, and wretchedness" in the facility. Prisoners were not at all penitent useful labor could not be provided, and the authorities were unable to maintain the institution in a condition conducive to the improvement of prisoners. Dr. Rush, convinced that the idea of the penitentiary was basically sound, began to campaign for better conditions and better management. After much lobbying by Dr. Rush and the Pennsylvania Society, the state legislature approved the construction of two new penitentiaries, the Western in Pittsburgh and the East­ern in Philadelphia. They received their first inmates in 1826 and 1829.

 

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