The History of Prisons and Jails

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Podcast Transcript

There are many things in our world that have surprisingly ancient origins. 

One of the things that most definitely does not have ancient origins in the concept of prison and incarceration as punishment. 

Today, almost everywhere in the world, the primary form of punishment for crimes is incarceration. Yet historically speaking, this form of punishment was almost never practiced until the modern era. 

Learn more about prisons and jails, their differences, and how they came to be on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.


The concept of incarceration as a formalized punishment system is relatively recent in human history.

If you go back, actually, not too far in history, the idea of locking someone up as punishment for a crime was absolutely unheard of. This was true for almost all of human history, across every society and civilization in the world. 

Consider the following…..

You live in some sort of community that mostly relies on self-sufficient agriculture, or maybe you live with a tribe of hunter gatherers. 

Either way, your entire life surrounds providing food for your family and your community. 

Now, let’s suppose someone commits a crime in your community. Perhaps they steal something, destroy something, or even kill someone. 

What do you do? Assuming you believe that there has to be some sort of consequence for your actions, and that is something that unified every culture in history, what sort of punishment do you mete out?

If you decided that incarceration was to be the punishment, think about what would be required by the community to do this. 

First, resources would have to be put into the construction of some sort of facility. Regardless of how elaborate or not this facility was, it would have to be built, which would require time and resources. 

Then, the facility would need people to guard the prisoner. People who would not be defending your people or growing food. In fact, they would require food and resources. 

Finally, assuming we had a penal system like we do today, the guilty party would be fed, housed, and clothed and wouldn’t have to do anything. 

In a world where people are involved in back-breaking labor every day, such a punishment wouldn’t be considered a punishment at all. It would be considered a reward. 

Most people would consider having all of their needs met, even if it meant living in a cell, to be preferable to their lives. 

If a person were given such a sentence, it would probably cause resentment more than a sense of justice. 

So, prisons as a form of punishment were simply not economically or socially feasible in the ancient world. 

Punishments for crimes differed across civilizations and time, but there were common threads. If possible, fines or restitution to the aggrieved party would be normal. 

However, punishments were also physical. Corporal punishment of some sort, including whipping or mutilation, was almost universal. 

Depending on the person, banishment or exile might also have been an option.

Someone could be sold into slavery depending on the crime, and of course, the most universal of punishments was death. 

The goal was not usually justice and certainly not rehabilitation. It was usually establishing societal order. 

The Code of Hammurabi in Babylon, Rome’s Twelve Tables, the Laws of Manu in India, and the legal systems in Greece and China all had somewhat similar punishments for crimes. 

All of that being said, people were sometimes held in confinement.

This is where the difference between a jail and a prison comes into play. 

The primary difference between a prison and a jail lies in their purpose and the length of incarceration. Jails are short-term facilities to hold individuals awaiting trial, sentencing, or serving sentences of less than a year, often for misdemeanors. 

Prisons, on the other hand, are long-term facilities to house individuals convicted of serious crimes, serving sentences usually longer than a year. 

A jail is someplace where you hold someone awaiting trial or punishment, whereas a prison is the punishment.

Jails can be found throughout history. There are reports from Ancient China of people being held in temples before they were tried. The Romans had jails known as carceres where people were briefly held before punishment or trial.

There are few examples of these holding facilities that survive because they were more often than not permanent facilities. 

What we do know are facilities that were built during the Middle Ages in places like castles. You know them as dungeons. 

The term “dungeon” derives from the Old French word “donjon,” which refers to the central tower or keep of a castle.

Dungeons were fortified underground chambers or rooms used primarily for detention within castles or fortifications.

Dungeons were not usually used as punishments for common crimes. They were usually used for political prisoners or aristocratic prisoners who were captured during war and held for ransom.

Dungeons were dark, cold, and damp, and those who spent enough time in one probably didn’t have a long life expectancy. 

Some castles eventually became dedicated facilities for holding political prisoners. In particular the Tower of London and the Bastille in Paris.

The origins of modern prisons go back to 16th century England with the establishment of workhouses.

Workhouses began as a remedy for idle poverty. Idleness was actually a crime, as was being a vagabond.

Workhouses offered shelter and basic necessities in exchange for labor, often in harsh and demeaning conditions.

Over time, workhouses became seen as a place to put criminals, not just the poor. 


For the first time, around this period, the use of workhouses for criminal  rehabilitation was proposed. Thomas Moore, in his book Utopia, suggested that the government shouldn’t kill criminals but instead put them to work.

As the Industrial Revolution took hold, more people moved to cities, and crime exploded.  In an effort to combat crime, Britain radically expanded the number of crimes where the death penalty could be prescribed.

There were over 200 different crimes, some often rather petty, for which someone could be executed. This became known as the “Bloody Code.” 

Such capital crimes included Stealing goods worth more than 1 shilling, cutting down a tree, stealing sheep or horses, and writing threatening letters.

The intent was to provide a deterrent to crime. However, it didn’t work. Crime kept going up, and people would often attend executions as entertainment. 

Juries were often reluctant to convict offenders for minor crimes, knowing the sentence was death. An alternative punishment was sending people to the colonies as indentured servants. 

As much as we like to make fun of Australians as being the place where convicts were sent, the first such colonies for criminals was actually the Americas. 

However, with the American Revolution, that option was removed. 

Around this same time, enlightenment thinkers like Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham questioned the morality and effectiveness of traditional punishments.

Bentham, in fact, designed a theoretical prison he called the Panopticon. Its defining feature is a circular structure with a central observation tower surrounded by a ring of cells. The design allows a single observer in the tower to monitor all inmates in their cells without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched at any given moment.

All of this resulted in the Penitentiary Act of 1779. The Penitentiary Act aimed to provide incarceration as a punishment instead of death or being sent to the colonies. 

The act mandated the construction of secure, sanitary prisons where inmates would be housed in solitary cells, provided with regular work, and subjected to strict discipline. The act emphasized rehabilitation over punishment, promoting religious instruction and moral reform.

However, the prisons mandated in the act were never constructed. 

In the United States, many of the same Enlightenment-era reforms were being adopted by the new country to establish its criminal justice system.

In 1790, the Walnut Street Penitentiary, also known as the Walnut Street Jail, was built in Philadelphia. 

The term Penitentiary actually came from the Quakers, who believed they would be a place for penitence.

Over the next several years, two different systems of incarceration developed in the United States. They were known as the Pennsylvania System and the Auburn System.

They were named after the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, built in 1829, and the Auburn Prison, in Auburn, New York, built in 1816.

In the Pennsylvania System, Prisoners were kept in total isolation in their cells at all times. Each cell was large, with a bed, table, toilet, and sometimes a small personal yard for exercise.

In the Auburn System, prisoners worked together in silence during the day, typically in workshops. Inmates were required to remain silent at all times, even when working or eating. Cells were small, intended only for sleeping, as inmates spent much of their time outside them.

The biggest difference between the systems was prison as a solitary affair vs a communal affair. Both systems had the goal of rehabilitating prisoners.


The Pennsylvania system became popular in Europe, where it influenced many prisons in countries like Germany and France. However, it declined in use due to high costs and concerns about the negative psychological effects of prolonged isolation.

Ultimate, the Auburn system won out. The reason was primarily due to economics. Building smaller cells and communal spaces was simply more cost-efficient. Also, having prisoners work together allowed for more efficient assembly line type labor, which was impossible under the Pennsylvania system.

Most prisons today follow at least the basic tenets of the Auburn system. 

The 19th and 20th centuries saw the establishment of national penal systems and the expansion of incarceration as the dominant form of punishment. 

Alternate punishments, such as mutilation, whipping, and public humiliation, fell out of vogue in most countries, although there are still countries that practice this to one degree or another. Countries that still have the death penalty usually reserve it for especially severe crimes such as murder.

Incarceration and imprisonment have become so widespread as a form of punishment that almost anything else is considered unusual at this point. 

The Auburn system’s success wasn’t universal, however. There has been a shift back to the Pennsylvania model of strict isolation for some prisons, at least in a few cases. 

On October 22, 1983, a riot at the Marion Penitentiary in Illinois resulted in the deaths of two guards by members of the Ayran Brotherhood gang. The killings, premeditated and executed with deadly precision, highlighted the increasing violence and power of prison gangs in high-security facilities. In response, Marion Penitentiary was placed on permanent lockdown.

This permanent lockdown of the Marion Penitentiary became the model for what became known as super-maximum security prisons, or Supermax.

Supermax prisons were developed to manage inmates who exhibit extreme violence, are leaders of prison gangs or criminal organizations, have escaped or attempted to escape from high-security facilities, and pose significant risks to staff, other inmates, or the public.

Supermax prisons are designed to ensure maximum security and control over inmates. Key features include confinement to cells for 22 to 24 hours per day, small cells with minimal furnishings, and almost zero interaction with other inmates. 

Supermax prisons make no attempt at rehabilitation prisoners as almost no one who enters will ever leave.

Perhaps the most famous Supermax prison is ADX Florence which is located in Freemont County, Colorado. It is informally known as “the Alcatraz of the Rockies.”

As of this recording, the prison holds 344 male inmates, even though it could hold as many as 474. While a small prison, its inmates read like a who’s who of crime over the last several decades:

The list of inmates has included The “Unabomber” “Ted” Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, a Co-conspirator in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, The “Olympic Park Bomber” Eric Rudolph, “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Former leader of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, The “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid, and many others. 

To date, no one has ever escaped from a Supermax prison.

Prisons and incarceration have become so ubiquitous as a means of punishment that most people don’t even realize that it is a rather modern innovation. 

There are still many debates about what prison should be, how many people should be in prison, and what crimes should require imprisonment. 

However, the very idea of incarceration and prison as a punishment for crimes, as opposed to the types of punishment that came before, is almost universally accepted now, which is a radical change from what humanity practiced for most of its existence.

It is all due to the ideas of 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers.