Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Prisons
British jailers murdered American prisoners several months after the end of the War of 1812 in the last act of hostility between the U.K. and the United States.
The penitentiary was invented in the United States as a more rational and humane way of punishing. It quickly ran into problems that still overwhelm us.
Prisons are a fact of life in America. However unsatisfactory and however well-concealed they may be, we cannot imagine doing without them.
Hard Looks at Hidden History
One of the more unlikely results of the American Revolution was Australia. Most American colonists came here voluntarily, of course, but until 1776 we meekly accepted boatloads of His Majesty’s convicts as indentured servants.
During the spring of 1825 a handful of prisoners were landed on the shore of the Hudson River at Mt. Pleasant to begin construction of a new penitentiary. For six months they toiled under the wary eyes and ready muskets of their keepers, sleeping in tents and lean-tos.
While some American captives languished, others conducted a flourishing market—and a huge black sailor organized everything
Stark, mist-enshrouded Dartmoor prison has long held a fascination for those interested in British crime.
An American journalist, George Kennan, was the first to reveal the full horrors of Siberian exile and the brutal, studied inhumanity of czarist “justice”
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