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.
Read more about this topic: Auburn System
Famous quotes containing the word punishment:
“The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature—were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Inside, the others sat at their carpentry, varnishing, sorting, gluing, had still two years, five years to do. He was standing at the carstop.
The punishment begins.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)