Liberty's Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America

Early American Studies

by Jen Manion

Liberty's Prisoners examines how changing attitudes about work, freedom, property, and family shaped the creation of the penitentiary system in the United States. The first penitentiary was founded in Philadelphia in 1790, a period of great optimism and turmoil in the Revolution's wake. Those who were previously dependents with no legal standing—women, enslaved people, and indentured servants—increasingly claimed their own right to life, liberty, and happiness. A diverse cast of women and men, including immigrants, African Americans, and the Irish and Anglo-American poor, struggled to make a living. Vagrancy laws were used to crack down on those who visibly challenged longstanding social hierarchies while criminal convictions carried severe sentences for even the most trivial property crimes.

The penitentiary was designed to reestablish order, both behind its walls and in society at large, but the promise of reformative incarceration failed from its earliest years. Within this system, women served a vital function, and Liberty's Prisoners is the first book to bring to life the e xperience of African American, immigrant, and poor white women imprisoned in early America. Always a minority of prisoners, women provided domestic labor within the institution and served as model inmates, more likely to submit to the authority of guards, inspectors, and reformers. White men, the primary targets of reformative incarceration, challenged authorities at every turn while African American men were increasingly segregated and denied access to reform.

Liberty's Prisoners chronicles how the penitentiary, though initially designed as an alternative to corporal punishment for the most egregious of offenders, quickly became a repository for those who attempted to lay claim to the new nation's promise of liberty.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Politics

296 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2015

About the author

Jen Manion is a social and cultural historian, author, and professor of History and Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies at Amherst College. Manion is the author of Female Husbands: A Trans History and Liberty's Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America.

Reviews

[Teri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walnut Street Prison in Philadelphia was the first designated prison in the United States. Jen Manion’s Liberty’s Prisoners looks at the history of the prison and more importantly its part in creating a carceral system in America and the effects on the disparity in class and gender of local society.

Following British reforms, punishment in Philadelphia was practiced publicly utilizing both public shame and labor authorized by the 1786 Act to Amend the Penal Laws of the State. This act served “to offset the expense of caring for convicts in prison; to discourage criminals through shame and embarrassment from resuming a life of crime, and to deter others from resorting to crime.” (pp. 18-19, Kindle) As slave labor had defined a set of “social roles and expectations” (p. 32, Kindle) that advocated and justified systemic racism through violence and inequality, so too did the penal system in Philadelphia. These roles and expectations were never truly altered as African Americans gained legal freedom; it was merely the circumstance of their bondage that changed. From slavery to carceral bondage, African Americans were subjected to new ways of forced labor and punishment.

Manion clearly shows the disparity among races, classes, and gender in Philadelphia and how the treatment of the imprisoned has contributed to unequal civil liberties in American society that is still hanging over us today. Much of the book is dedicated to the comparison of the treatment of African American women to their male and white counterparts; however Manion analyzes quantifiable data to look at all those imprisoned in Philadelphia from the 1790s through the 1820s to find patterns of abuse and disparity that contributed to a system of continued inequality in early American society. The overarching thesis shows a perpetual cyclical system that for many African Americans, poor, and gendered continues to entrench them in new forms of bondage and inequality.

I think what resonated most with me, was the treatment of women. We see how once women became a victim of hard times; it would be almost impossible to be pulled out of the system. No matter what one did to try to better their circumstance, they would find themselves in a situation that pulled them into the penal system and they never really break that cycle. We still see this today among many in lower economic populations and among the homeless. This book shows how those cycles and social constructs were created and perpetuated over time.

[Nuha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spanning the late 1700s and early 1800s, Jen Manion's Liberty's Prisoners examines the rich history of the penal system in early America. Using records from the Walnut St Prison and Eastern State Penitentiary, Manion paints a stirring portrait of incarcerated people. In doing so, she gives agency to the vast swathes of women, immigrants and working poor who have long been subject to an unjust justice system. Even though I am a newcomer to the field of carcarel studies, I found this text to be accessible and informative!

[Arlian]

Note to self: I listened a "new books network on gender studies" interview with the author. The author and the interviewer talked at length with the various and contradictory goals and reasons for setting up prisons in the first place (i.e. is it to punish, to educate, to reform, to assimilate, etc) and this reminded me of the various contracting reasons and goals of the accountability process. The interview and the book might be helpful for you research on "trigger warning"