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 studyThe 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and key actors Ashley T. Rubin examineswhy Eastern''s administrators clung to what was increasingly viewed as an outdated and inhuman model of prison - and what theircommitmenttells us about penal reform in an era when prisons were still new and carefully scrutinized.