Auburn State Prison

Auburn State Prison, prison located in Auburn, New York. Opened in 1816, it established a disciplinary and administrative system based on silence, corporal punishment, and “congregate” (group) labour. In architecture and routine, Auburn became the model for prisons throughout the United States.

In the early 19th century, many Americans believed that industrialization and dramatic demographic, economic, and political upheavals had “conspired” against the traditional controls of family, church, and community. From their perspective these moral guardians could no longer adequately control disorder. They saw crime as the product of social chaos. Necessary to its eradication was a structured environment in which deviants could be separated from the disorder of society and the contagion of one another. Their solution was to create the “penitentiary”—a new institution for “reforming” offenders and, ultimately, restoring social stability.

Auburn originally used congregate cells, but in 1821 Warden William Brittin borrowed the concept of solitary cells from the so-called Pennsylvania system. Brittin designed a unique five-tiered cell-block of two rows of single cells, placed back to back in the centre of the building. Cells measured only 3.5 feet (1.06 metres) wide, 7.5 feet (2.3 metres) long, and 7 feet (2.1 metres) high; doors faced outer walls lined with grated windows that provided indirect light and air. This pattern of small inside cellblocks was later adopted by most state prisons in the United States. Whereas the Pennsylvania system’s inmates did handicraft work in their cells, Auburn prisoners laboured in congregate workshops, offsetting imprisonment costs by fulfilling private-industry contracts. A hidden passageway with small openings surrounded the work area, allowing inspectors and visitors to surreptitiously monitor the inmates. A uburn briefly (1821–25) implemented a three-level classification system. Under it, minor offenders laboured in workshops during the day and retired to separate cells at night; serious offenders alternated their days between solitary confinement and congregate work. The most-hardened criminals were placed in solitary confinement without work. After numerous suicides, instances of mental illness, and attempted escapes, the governor of New York terminated the classification system and the experiment in solitary confinement.

Subsequently, all male inmates worked in congregate shops by day, returning to individual cells at night. (Females, first committed to Auburn in 1825, were relegated to an attic and excluded from regular work and exercise.) To ensure that inmates did not corrupt one another, Brittin’s successor, Elma Lynds, enforced a quasi-military routine of absolute silence, strict discipline, and economic productivity. In response to bells, head-shaven inmates dressed in striped clothing silently marched in lockstep formation to and from their cells for meals and work assignments. Letters were banned, and the chaplain was the only occasional visitor. Flogging and other forms of corporal punishment enforced the rules. Such regimentation was thought necessary to restrain the rebellious nature of the offenders.

Eventually, overcrowding made the silence system unenforceable, and Auburn’s system of discipline deteriorated into corrupt and lax routines of harsh punishment. After the Civil War, the spirit of reform withered, and contract labour was no longer profitable. Despite the demise of the “ideal” system, Auburn remained the model for nearly a century, primarily because it had been inexpensive to construct and maintain.