Prison reform free essay sample

The main thing about the prison reform was about separation of people in the prisons. People were being arrested for the most obscure things, children, that would do minor misdemeanors would be put in prison with men and woman that would murder people. After the war in 1812, juvenile detention centers were built to try and correct the behavior of the children. This was better than throwing them in prison with grown men who were hard criminals. People who were mentally ill were also put into prison as a criminal.The prisons in Massachusetts conditions were horrible. The prisoners were treated awfully and if any prisoner would misbehave they would be put in solitary confinement. That is where a prisoner who did something bad in prison would have to spend their sentence in pure isolation away from everyone else. They werent allowed to talk or do any type of communication with anyone else. We will write a custom essay sample on Prison reform or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Another form of punishment added on to solitary confinement was labor. In 1821 , the prisoners that were in solitary confinement were going crazy. Out of 80 prisoners more than half of them omitted suicide or had mental breakdowns.This is what caused the prisons to have them work with hard labor rather than having them in a room by themselves all day. Labor the only time the inmate was allowed to talk to anyone else. The prisoners were harshly whipped, brutally beaten, and horribly chained. This caught the eye of one school teacher named Dorothy Dixie. Lofty were to look up anything about the prison reform in the 1 asss, she would be the one you would find the most information about. Throated Dixie was born in April 4, 1802. She was born in Hampered, Maine and was the oldest of three children.She ran away at age 12 from feeling neglected and abused. She went to live with her grandma for awhile then moved in with her aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was very mature and intellectual for a girl that was only 14. At this age she opened her first school and became a teacher. In 1841 she was approached by a man who was going to teach a class in prison and he asked her for advice. She decided to teach the class herself and that changed her life forever. She witnessed the horrors Of the prison and she away that the mentally ill were put in this prison with all the criminals.She then wanted to make a change and improve the prisons. She visited every prison in the state of Massachusetts for 2 years and did a very decrypted report about the prison systems. She turned that report in to the Massachusetts legislature. Treating the mentally ill as criminals rather than patients is to condemn them to mental death, Throated Dixie said this. This report convinced the state of Massachusetts to improve prison conditions and created hospitals for the mentally ill. This effort from Throated was an example for other states and had 15 other states influenced to improve their prisons.