The Deviant Prison

Early nineteenth-century American prisons followed one of two dominant models: the Auburn system, in which prisoners performed factory-style labor by day and were placed in solitary confinement at night, and the Pennsylvania system, where prisoners faced 24-hour solitary confinement for the duration of their sentences. By the close of the Civil War, the majority of prisons in the United States had adopted the Auburn system - the only exception was Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary, making it the subject of much criticism anda fascinating outlier. Using the Eastern State Penitentiary as a case study,The Deviant Prisonbrings to light anxieties and other challenges of nineteenth-century prison administration that helped embed our prison system as we know it today. Drawing on organizational theory and providing a rich account of prison life, the institution, and key actors, Ashley T. Rubin examineswhy Eastern's administrators clung to what was increasingly viewed as an outdated and inhuman model of prison - and what theircommitmenttells us about penal reform in an era when prisons were still new and carefully scrutinized.