Eastern State Penitentiary
Exploring the history and reformation system of Eastern State Penitentiary through prisoner records
ABOUT
YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
INSTITUTION
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INTRODUCTION
The Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829 with the purpose of offering a new and humane kind of prison reform for its convicts in what is known as the Pennsylvania system. To its critics, it was notorious for its use of solitary confinement; to its advocates, it was praiseworthy for a system that allowed prisoners to have space for proper self-reflection.
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Despite the penitentiary’s high-minded ideals, backed by thinkers like Benjamin Franklin, Eastern State was not as successful in executing their well-meant reform as the founders had hoped, as can be seen in the charges raised against the prison administration in 1834. In 1842, Charles Dickens wrote a scathing report about the penitentiary in his American Notes.
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Regardless of its public reception, what is at stake within the topic of exploring Eastern State is the administration’s treatment of the prisoners and, how the administration decided to perceive, respond to, discipline, and change the prisoners. We invite our readers to explore the ways in which power has been circumscribed through prison recordkeepers.
MEET THE PRISONERS
“Cooks for the sick. Professes to be turned to God. Seems to possess appropriate dispositions, reads and prays.
Is ignorant.”