A depth of terrible endurance": the construction of incarcerated labor at Eastern State Penitentiary
Date
2024
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) opened its doors with the goals of reforming incarcerated Pennsylvanians in 1829. Utilizing the penal method commonly referred to as the Pennsylvania System, the institution intended to operate through “solitary confinement at labour, with instruction in labour, in morals, and in religion.” The incarcerated people at ESP were trained in weaving, shoe-making, chair seat caning, and cigar making, among other occupations. While other penal systems were investing in industrial scale production in prisons for economic profit, ESP embodied the tension between moral commitment to reform and rehabilitation, and the economic pressures of running the penitentiary in a rapidly industrializing context. The evidence of labor practices at ESP demonstrates that the enacted version of carceral labor became a balance of equipment and material costs, the skills of the incarcerated population, and the judgements of character based on socioeconomic factors that predisposed people to certain tasks. These practices had bodily effects on incarcerated people. A consideration of the record relating to the human body serves to supplement the missing glimpses of personal experience in relation to labor which have been written out of the archive. This constellation of human contact within the penitentiary reveals the forces of medical neglect, institutional racism and sexism, against which incarcerated individuals struggled as individuals and laborers. This analysis uncovers how the moral aspirations underlying the labor program at ESP were overshadowed by the institution's prioritization of efficiency and economic gains over the period ideals of moral reform, resulting in the failure of the system by the 1870s with overcrowding making solitary confinement wholly impossible.
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Keywords
Craft, Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, Prison labor