In the 1980’s, before I moved to France, I taught at a French high school in New York City, le Lycée français de New York. Students were extremely well-behaved, in part because of a rigorous, almost military, system of discipline.
Upon entering the classroom on my first day, I stepped back in near fright. Seeing me, uniformed students jumped to their feet, standing straight, shoulders back, and cried in unison: “Bonjour, Madame.” This was not my first teaching experience, but this had never happened to me before.
In one of my English classes, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter was required reading. I brushed up on Hawthorne and read the novel. Though I found it hard going, I was intrigued by this story of adultery in 17th century Boston.
The Scarlet Letter begins with two powerful symbols: the door of the prison built by the Puritan fathers and a wild rosebush growing off to its side. The narrator points out that all societies require their prison and their cemetery. More subtly, he suggests they need their wild rosebush as well.
During this month of January, I’ve been in prison and had prisons much on my mind. Don’t worry, I haven't been arrested. I was in Philadelphia and while there, I did something I’d been wanting to do for years: I visited Eastern State Penitentiary, the world’s first modern prison, and for anyone who has never been there, it’s well worth the visit.
Eastern State Penitentiary, or ESP as it’s known, is a place of many firsts. When its first prisoner entered in 1829, he discovered a simple cell with running water and central heating, the first institution in the United States to offer these conveniences, long before the President knew such comforts in the White House.
ESP also gave new meaning to the term “penitentiary,” originally reserved for priests responsible for penitents, or for the place where they were confined to reflect on their sins. It was a religious term. In the United States, in the early 1800’s, it became synonymous with a state prison.
Philadelphia is known as the Quaker City and prominent Quakers were among the prison’s founders. For these well-meaning men, prison was for repentance, penitence and punishment, a necessary ingredient on the road to rehabilitation. Prisoners of ESP lived in individual cells, lighted from above, with white-washed walls and wooden floors. They had a bed, table, and work bench. This represented relative comfort in 1829.
But they also lived in solitary confinement for as long as their sentence lasted, never setting eyes on another living soul. When they had to leave their cells, their heads were covered with a sack. There was no collective workspace or recreation. The prisoner was left entirely alone to reflect and repent of his crime. This mode of incarceration gave birth to what became “the Pennsylvania system,” exported throughout the world.
ESP was originally meant for 250 inmates. At the beginning of the 20th century, it housed about 900, requiring doubling up in cells. Long before, the strict solitary confinement imagined by the prison’s founders had come to an end.
In Paris, there is a 19th century prison whose organization was in part inspired by ESP: la Santé, inaugurated in 1867 and operational still today. When it first opened, Napoleon III was Emperor of France, and the chief administrator of Paris was a faithful ally, Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann. His mission was to tear down old Paris and turn the city into a modern capital, which included a state-of-the-art prison.
Haussmann commissioned architect Joseph Vaudremer to build France’s first penitentiary. Its name, la Santé, means “health,” an echo of a 17th century hospice that once occupied its grounds.
Vaudremer designed a prison that adopted not only the Pennsylvania, but also the Auburn system, named after a penitentiary in upstate New York. There, in the 1820’s, prisoners spent their days in a collective workspace and their nights in solitary confinement in narrow cells. Moving between the two, they marched in lockstep and were the first to wear striped uniforms.
In 2014, la Santé was the symbol of the general decay of the French prison system. That year it was closed for renovations. On January 7th, 2019, it reopened its doors to its first 80 inmates (the renovated prison is designed for 800) and then quickly locked them inside.
Each prisoner now has an individual cell that is basically a 90-square-foot studio with a small bathroom and an electric burner for cooking simple meals (many Parisians live in spaces that small, but they’re free to open their front door).
In some cells, however, bunkbeds have been installed. The French system is overcrowded and prison director Christelle Rotach anticipates an occupation rate of 150%.
Eastern State Penitentiary closed in 1970. Though it has been a National Historic Landmark since 1965, the prison was abandoned from 1970 till 1991, when restoration began. Today, ESP is also used as an exhibition space, a venue for special events, such as Bastille Day, and the set for films.
La Santé and ESP are both imposing reminders of a conception of punishment and control dating back to the late 18th century. That is when English philosopher Jeremy Bentham invented the panopticon, a mode of controlling prisoners through their fear of being watched.
For Bentham, the ideal prison (though he also applied his ideas to schools or hospitals), was a circular structure with a watchtower at its center. This became the floorplan of ESP, designed by English-born architect John Haviland, with cellblocks, like the spokes in a wheel, radiating from the central watchtower. From within, hidden from view, a single watchman could observe all inmates though they could never be sure when he was watching them.
Such a system encouraged prisoners to behave as if they were being constantly observed, prompting them to regulate their behavior at all times. This would lead, in Bentham’s words, to “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.”
In Hawthorne’s 17th century Boston, there was only one prison. Today the United States has become a nation of prisons, with the highest incarceration rates in the world. As for prison reform, 21st century reformers seem no closer to knowing how to rehabilitate those behind bars than were those Philadelphia Quakers 200 years ago.
In one area, however, great progress has been made. Inside and outside of prison, video and virtual surveillance are everywhere, giving those doing the observing “power of mind over mind.”
These are hard time for the wild rosebush growing outside the prison door.
