Historical American Punishment

The regions of American have experienced a variety of prison choices and capital punishment techniques and policies. Over time, both grew to be considered more "humane" and "fair" by the evolving standards of American society.

Originally, the South tended to favor chain gangs and the renting of criminals as labor services to private individuals in lieu of incurring state expenses involved with incarceration. In some cases, this method provided funding for ten percent of annual state budgets. Additionally, criminals sentenced to such tasks were in no way protected by the contract between the state and their private operator. Thus, criminals on chain gangs doing public or private labor were prone to extensive abuse, and had an average life expectancy of 3-5 years beyond the date of the beginning of their sentences. Under this system, a ten-year sentence usually ended prematurely with the death of the criminal.

Blacks in areas where chain gangs were prevalent would be sentence to such punishment for minor infractions like vagrancy with such vigor that this system essentially created legal slavery for those previously freed from such straits. The irony of the situation was that pubic profiteering from criminal labor and chain gangs provided the backbone for economic recovery in the antebellum South.

Capital punishment was also more brutal in the South and West in earlier years, with many states opting for public hangings as the most popular form of execution. Over time, however, the public nature of these spectacles gave way to ticketed audiences and, later, controlled-access private events in an effort to avoid further desensitizing the public or risking riots and other disorderly situations. The last states who utilized public hangings used them for the executions of convicted rapists, who were primarily black.

Eventually, nearly all states implementing capital punishment made the transition from hanging to lethal injection, and murder was made the only capital crime through a re-evalutation of the protection against cruel & unusual punishment -- as it applied to hanging and other methods of execution -- by the U.S. Supreme Court. Additionally, the public use of criminl labor also fell by the wayside, giving way to "Big House" -style prisons, which were cheap to operate, albeit non-rehabilitating.

Contrary to the South, the North and Midwest tended to favor secluded-scenario prisons in earlier times, with the goal of encouraging repentance. However, that style was very expensive, and both of the northern regions began to transition to the use of "Big House" prisons to cut the cost of their operations, though in doing so they forsook their previous goals and methods. Additionally, the North and Midwest experimented with a variety of execution methods in search of those that were least cruel and most effective, beginning with the use of electrical current in executions.

Electrocution was usually a very effective method of dispatching death-row criminals. However, it experienced difficulties in acceptance, since the mutilation of corpses through the process (ie. burned flesh and singed bodyparts) and failures requiring multiple shockings for effect prompted discussions of cruelty.

Another factor in these discussions was the selection of Alternating Current (A/C) vs. Direct Current (D/C) current generation technologies. A/C provided more energy, and so Thomas Edison used his position as the creator of D/C to try to brand the A/C backer, Westinghouse, with a stigma of danger and death associated with using A/C power in widespread technology. The contest of acceptance between Edison and Westinghouse came to be known as the Battle of the Currents; Edison was successful in lobbying the government to use A/C power in electrocutions, but he lost his bid to establish D/C as the standard for future technology.

After lengthy experimentation with various technologies, including both electrocution and gas chamber methods, the North and Midwest settled on lethal injection as the method of choice for executions due to its effectiveness and simplicity. Lethal injection also removed the "executioner" stigma by using multiple prison technicians and modular instructions and responsibilities to distribute the actual process of the execution across a handful of individuals.

The motivations for evolution and reform of capital punishment methods and prison systems were the lobbying efforts and provocations of two influential lobbying groups, the NAACP and the ACLU. Each represented different groups of people with different interests, but both encouraged re-evaluations of punishments and prison systems for their effectiveness in upholding federal laws and rights guaranteed by the Constitution equally for all citizens. Prior to reform, the vast majority of inmates incarcerated and executed were Black.

Reform was slow in the South, and the rate of progress was much lower due to economic and social blocks, like the cost of different methods and the status differences among the races of criminals in the eyes of local lawmen. In the northern regions, reform was easier to accomplish with a wealthier, more stable populace, loaded with progressive graduates of law schools who promoted the Legal Realism movement and supported their peers in encouraging change.

Citation

Eckert, Daniel C. Historical American Punishment. (2008, April).