Punishment
In 1821, a new principal keeper, Elam Lynds, was appointed to run the prison. Lynds believed absolutely in the disciplinary power of the lash and used flogging to punish even minor infractions. When Elam Lynds was in power, many inmates died from the abuse of the whip. In 1839, a prisoner died from neglect and over-flogging. The committee of Auburn and other staff members of the Auburn Theological Seminary petitioned to bring the issue of the punishments to the State government. “The law stated that six blows on the naked back with the "cat" or six-stranded whip was the most punishment that could be assigned for any one offense.”
In 1846 another meeting was congregated to abolish the use of whips as punishment. The flagellation could only be used for riots or in severe cases. When whippings were prohibited, guards and keepers searched for new and inventive ways to punish the disorderly. “The shower bath consisted of a barrel about 4½ feet high with a discharge tube at the bottom. The prisoner was stripped naked, bound hand and foot, with a wooden collar around his neck to prevent him moving his head. The barrel, with the inmate inside, was placed directly under an outlet pipe, where water, sometimes iced, would pour down.” Another form of punishment that was allowed was “the yoke”. The yoke used iron bars around the neck and arms of the prisoners.
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Famous quotes containing the word punishment:
“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.”
—John Philpot Curran (1750–1817)
“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“All the philosophy, therefore, in the world, and all the religion, which is nothing but a species of philosophy, will never be able to carry us beyond the usual course of experience, or give us measures of conduct and behaviour different from those which are furnished by reflections on common life. No new fact can ever be inferred from the religious hypothesis; no event foreseen or foretold; no reward or punishment expected or dreaded, beyond what is already known by practice and observation.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)