By 1830, the Washington D.C. Penitentiary was ready for the “reception of convicts”. In his State of the Union Address, that year President Andrew Jackson urged Congress to appropriate the funds for the completion and support of the prison. The District Penitentiary as it was called, was one of a series of penitentiaries that were built to replace the system of death and corporal punishments with the imprisonment of offenders under harsh labor with discipline conducive to reforming convicts into model citizens.
In 1800, the American criminal code system in most jurisdictions prescribed the death penalty for a wide variety of crimes and corporal punishment such as whipping or branding for less serious fines. Over the next two decades, this system of punishment proved to be ineffective and unjust. Rather than deter crime it made those who received corporal punishment more isolated and angrier at society. It did little to reform criminals and was considered be inhumane. We were looking to a new approach of imprisoning offenders and forcing them to serve hard labor under conditions that would help to transform them into model citizens. One of these new prisons was to be in Washington D.C. In 1825, Congress appropriated funds to build a new penitentiary in Washington B.C, and in 1825 President John Quincy Adams chose Charles Bullish to design a penitentiary consisting of three buildings and 160 cells enclosed by a 30-foot wall. Prior to this, there were only two jails in the area. One in Washington D.C and the other in Alexandra, but bot were primarily used for pre-trial detention, confinement debtors and runaway slaves. They were not designed to hold a prisoner for the long term. The new prison was built to create an environment where prisoners could be taught those skills that were necessary to become a valued member of society. This included hard-work, personal discipline, respect for authority and temperance. Both the appearance of the building and the interior environment had a military feel to it, and prisoners were subject to hard and log labor, primarily in shoe making. Prisoner’s were given moral and religious training as well. Prison chaplains placed a Bible in every cell and kept the prison library stocked with religious tracts. Chaplains also provided secular education including reading and writing.
In 1829, Congress passed an act to designate the facility as the penitentiary for the District of Columbia and established that it be used exclusively from imprisoning persons who were convicted of breaking either United States laws or the laws of the District of Columbia. In addition, the act established a board of five inspectors and one warden. The penitentiary became known was the "District Penitentiary", and was to house both male and female prisoners, kept separate from each other. The 1829 act laid out procedures for cleansing, feeding and punishing prisoners, as well as book keeping and physician care. In December of 1830, President Jackson announced in his State of the Union address, that the penitentiary was ready for the "reception of convicts, and only awaits the necessary legislation to put it into operation". Jackson's biggest concern though seemed to be the Congress never provided for suitable compensation for the board of inspectors. The 1829 law specified $1200 annual salary for the Warden and gave the inspectors the authority to set salaries of other officers and servants of the penitentiary but said nothing of any compensation for the officers themselves in charge of the inspection. Oops.
"The penitentiary is ready for the reception of convicts, and only awaits the necessary legislation to put it into operation, as one object of which I beg leave to recall your attention to the propriety of providing suitable compensation for the officers charged with its inspection."So, on February 25, 1831 Congress passed an act to make appropriations for the completion and support of the District penitentiary. in this act, it reduced the number of inspectors from five to three and set their annual salary of $250 each. (The actual text was "shall receive an annual salary, payable quarter-yearly, of two hundred and fifty dollars each."). Congress also increased the warden's salary from $1200 per annum to $1500. Also, in preparation for it's opening, Congress rewrote the District of Columbia criminal codes which were inherited from colonial Maryland and Virginia. The new laws applied to free persons only in the district and abolished the system of corporal punishment and limited the death penalty to murder treason and piracy.
References
Presidency.ucsb.edu. (2019). Second Annual Message | The American Presidency Project. [online] Available at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/second-annual-message-3 [Accessed 27 Apr. 2019].Loc.gov. (2019). An Act concerning the government and discipline of the penitentiary in the District of Columbia.- March 3, 1829. [online] Available at: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/20th-congress/session-2/c20s2ch65.pdf [Accessed 1 May 2019].
Loc.gov. (2019). Penitentirary Act of the District of Columbia, March 2nd 1831. [online] Available at: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/21st-congress/session-2/c21s2ch31.pdf [Accessed 1 May 2019].
Sullivan, David K. “Behind Prison Walls: The Operation of the District Penitentiary, 1831-1862.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 71/72, 1971, pp. 243–266. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40067776.
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