Sources

The remainder of this article draws primarily on Eastern's annual reports, which represent the principal medium through which the administrators presented and defended their embattled prison. As required by Eastern's foundational statute, these reports—produced every year from 1831 onward, excepting 1874 (a deep depression year)—were officially addressed to the state legislature. In practice, they were the prison's main public relations vehicle as they were widely circulated to and read by penal reform societies, prison administrators, and legislators around the country. Periodicals, including daily newspapers and bimonthly or quarterly publications, such as the North American Review, often reprinted excerpts or summarized these (and other prisons') reports for a wider audience, as did several reform societies in their own annual reports or journals. Many international commentators and even heads of state interested in penal reform acquired copies.

Eastern's annual reports consisted of separate reports from the board of inspectors, warden, physician, moral instructor, and (in some later years) schoolteacher. The board of inspectors' reports set the tone for the prison. These reports were written by a two-person subcommittee (usually the president and/or the secretary of the board) and then signed by the board. The reports were occasionally debated, but usually represented a consensus view among the inspectors, somewhat skewed toward the president's views. Indeed, in the second half of the period examined, the inspectors' reports were tremendously influenced by Richard Vaux, first as secretary, later as the board's long-time president. Disagreements, although rare, did occur. The few inspectors who significantly disagreed with the majority usually resigned within a few years of their appointment (but for every inspector who served less than six years, there was another who served for more than a decade). Notably, however, for some years in the late 1840s, Inspector Thomas Bradford, Jr., refused to sign the annual reports because of an ongoing disagreement with the board. Despite such disagreements and variation, themes from these reports often manifested in the reports from the prison's other officers.

Eastern's administrators supplemented these reports with solo-authored accounts of the prison. Several administrators wrote pamphlets and public letters, responded to queries from other penal actors, and submitted short descriptions of the prison to various publications, including visitors' guides to Philadelphia. Like their annual reports, these accounts were produced to sing the prison's praises and defend it against criticism.

Expertise from Situational Experience: Confronting PSAMPP

Administrators' first hurdle in establishing their professional identity was distinguishing themselves from their reformer counterparts. Compared to PSAMPP's reformers (and the state legislators), Eastern's administrators had little independent basis for their claims to professional status. As gentlemen reformers, the administrators shared similar backgrounds and, while working as penal reformers and politicians, had rubbed shoulders with their attackers. To make the case that, as prison administrators, they should have sole authority over the prison and prison policy, Eastern's administrators had to first shed their own identity as penal reformers.

This strategy did not emerge immediately. As would be true throughout the period examined, Eastern's first generation of administrators in the 1830s had few qualifications. Compared to later administrators, however, this first generation was more immersed in penal reform—advocacy, keeping up with the latest debates, and occasionally visiting jails and prisons. At least initially, penal reform, rather than prison management, was their primary source of prior experience and the primary basis of their claims to expertise. In Eastern's first annual report, the inspectors called attention to their “[m]any years [sic] experience, in the practical operation of the penal laws, and prison discipline” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1831, 12). Later in the decade, they explained that they “were in the habit of discussing the subject of Penitentiary relations in all its bearings” and “were fully imbued with the principles and views of its advocates,” meaning PSAMPP. Indeed, in these early years, the inspectors celebrated their relationship with PSAMPP, describing themselves as “the friends and associates of the promoters of the [Pennsylvania] system” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1837, 3).

When Eastern's administrators found themselves in direct confrontation with PSAMPP in the 1840s, however, reference to their own work as (and friendship with) penal reformers was no longer sufficient to establish administrators' particular bona fides. PSAMPP reformers were strong advocates of the Pennsylvania System, but in the 1840s, these reformers began to worry that the Pennsylvania System might cause insanity, just as many Auburn supporters had suggested. In January 1848, PSAMPP passed a resolution complaining that “the percentage of insanity and mortality at the Eastern Penitentiary is increasing to an alarming degree” (cited in Teeters Reference Teeters1937, 198).Footnote ¹³ They did not believe the Pennsylvania System was inherently harmful (e.g., Teeters Reference Teeters1937, 199), and they still believed it was the best available system. To reconcile their doubts about prisoners' health with their support for the system, PSAMPP criticized the system's implementation. After issuing several “memorials” to Eastern's administrators requesting certain changes, PSAMPP approached the legislature.

PSAMPP's actions put Eastern's administrators on the offensive. Beginning in the late 1840s, administrators no longer cited their experience with penal reform, which was useless in establishing their credentials against the reformers. Administrators turned instead to their situational knowledge: their experiences at the prison generated unique insights that nonadministrators lacked. No other Pennsylvanians—including the local penal reformers—had continuous, firsthand experience with prisoners; therefore, the administrators implied, no one else was qualified to suggest alterations to penal policy. Reverend John Ruth, Eastern's third moral instructor, touted his “own experience—having been brought into contact with criminal character almost hourly every day for the last eight years” to bolster his view on the purpose of punishment (Moral Instructor, Annual Report, 1870, 111). Likewise, the inspectors referred to themselves as “[t]hose, whose constant intercourse with convicts enables them to form an opinion on the subject” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1855, 6). By implication, those who infrequently interacted with prisoners, as reformers did, were insufficiently knowledgeable and unqualified to debate penal practice.

At times, Eastern's administrators were more explicit, asserting that the penal reformers did more harm than good when visiting the prisoners, even undoing the progress the administrators had made. Writing the year after PSAMPP's critical resolution, Reverend Thomas Larcombe, the prison's first moral instructor, warned about “[i]njudicious visiters [sic],” a not-so-subtle reference to PSAMPP's visiting committee, volunteers who visited prisoners monthly. Though they had “the best intentions,” they were “but a small part of the many untoward influences” the moral instructor had to “overcome by patient and prayerful effort.” How could such well-intentioned people “do much harm”? Quite simply, they lacked the requisite experience. They “cannot be acquainted with the peculiarities of a prisoner's position or disposition,” so when they visited with prisoners, they could easily do or say the wrong thing, thereby reversing the moral instructor's work (Moral Instructor, Annual Report, 1849, 35). Such statements undermined penal reformers' attempts to shape penal policy against the prison administrators' wishes. If PSAMPP reformers could derail a prisoner's reformation, how could the group be trusted to inform penal policy against the wishes of more knowledgeable men who worked with prisoners on a daily basis?

By turning to their situational knowledge to proclaim their expertise and reformers' inexpert status, Eastern's administrators initiated a recurring strategy: elevating themselves above unqualified others by claiming that the specificities of their experience as prison administrators established unique credentials. They used their claims of expertise to discredit other critics, extending the strategy beyond PSAMPP to the Boston and New York reformers as well. If such critics lacked the relevant knowledge (that only Eastern's administrators possessed), then their critiques must be groundless. However, the administrators used this tactic with growing intensity against another threat closer to home.

Establishing Jurisdiction: Wrestling with the Legislature

Beginning in the 1850s, administrators increasingly targeted the state legislature. As with PSAMPP, Eastern's administrators only confronted the legislature when it had ventured too far into administrators' perceived jurisdiction over the prison—and those penal and social policies that (administrators believed) affected its operation. Driven by exasperation at first and later anger at the growing threat, the administrators recycled their earlier strategy, establishing their own expert status at the legislature's expense.

In the first several decades, however, the administrators' relationship with the legislature was almost sanguine. Optimistic about the Pennsylvania System's potential, the administrators believed the legislature and other state actors could clear various hurdles blocking the prison's success; to this end, the administrators issued myriad requests and recommendations to the legislature during Eastern's first few decades.Footnote ¹⁴ The administrators rarely succeeded, and rare legislative acquiescence came after years of administrative imploring.

By the 1850s, the administrators grew increasingly vexed that the legislature ignored their requests. In 1855, for example, the inspectors “ventured again to invoke Legislative attention to the subject” of youthful and first-time offenders. The inspectors encouraged the legislature to consider revising its penal code—with the inspectors' advice and guidance. They complained that most penal policy was typically adopted too rarely and without their guidance, noting such “[s]poradic reforms are worse than useless.” The inspectors explained that such reforms failed without expertise, adding bitingly, “labors of those who are required to learn while they attempt to teach, are vain” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1855, 6–7). The legislature needed to learn from those who knew better, namely, Eastern's administrators. Tirades like this one became more common as administrators became disillusioned with the legislature's unresponsiveness.

Eastern's administrators became most aggressive (and critical), however, when the legislature sought to change penal policy without first consulting them—or against their (unsolicited) advice. In 1858, the legislature authorized a commission to alter the penal code (Pennsylvania 1858), which passed in 1860. In 1867, the legislature authorized a commission to investigate the appropriate system of prison discipline that the state's penitentiaries and jails should adopt (Pennsylvania 1867). Although the commission reported that the state penitentiaries' respective systems were adequate (Geary Reference Geary1902, 1032), in 1869, the legislature granted Western's administrators' request to abandon the Pennsylvania System at their prison and adopt the Auburn System (Pennsylvania 1869). That same year, the legislature created a Board of Charities and Corrections, overseeing the state's prisons, jails, insane asylum, and other “charities”; the Board was another suggestion PSAMPP had successfully passed through the legislature (Barnes [1927] Reference Barnes1968, 395). While legally undermining the Pennsylvania System and administrative control, the legislature was also destroying the Pennsylvania System in practice at Eastern. From 1866 onward, Eastern's administrators routinely asked the legislature to alleviate their growing overcrowding problem, noting they had to double-cell prisoners in violation of the principle of separation; while the legislature eventually responded, it was too little too late (e.g., Pennsylvania 1871; Warden, Annual Report, 1872, 93). The Pennsylvania System would never recover.

Feeling besieged by the legislature throughout the 1860s and 1870s, Eastern's administrators became increasingly aggressive in their self-descriptions as experts, and legislators as dilettantes interloping in penal affairs. Their modal argument, veering between insulting and condescending, encouraged the legislature to examine Eastern's annual reports before passing legislation. Legislators' “careful investigation” of the reports was, the inspectors argued, “necessary for wise legislation” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1875, 8). The administrators encouraged the legislature to review their reports “whenever more enlightened progress in penal science, shall demand a revision of the laws” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1863, 7). They compared their reports' compilation of statistics and explanations to the “superficial theories or crude conceptions” on which the legislators frequently relied (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1864, 13). As the administrators saw it, they knew better than the legislators what penal policy required; any laws passed without their consultation or a review of their writings were unwise and dangerous to public health and safety.

When the legislature enacted penal policy that contravened the administrators' recommendations, Eastern's administrators criticized the interference unsparingly, again emphasizing their own jurisdiction over penal policy. While the legislature considered a new penal code, for example, the administrators sought “respectfully to present to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, the propriety, as well as policy, of checking crude or special legislation on penal jurisprudence, as applied to prison discipline, which is not in harmony with these ascertained principles and their systematic developments” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1860, 10). After the legislature authorized the commission to investigate the appropriate system of prison discipline, the administrators stated that “any legislation not based on the knowledge” derived from their own annual reports “must be in itself of doubtful value” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1868, 25). The year after the legislature authorized the Auburn System at Western—leaving Eastern as the only US prison following the Pennsylvania System—Eastern's administrators wrote:

Each response to the legislature's interference offered the same message: defer to our years of experience and special expertise in these matters.

Expertise Granted: Johnson v. Halloway

While any legislation passed without their suggestions was unwelcome, the administrators saw the Commutation Law of 1861, which ordered prisoners' early release for good behavior (as discussed above), as a powerful blow. PSAMPP, the law's main advocate, had successfully convinced the legislature to change penal policy, and thus succeeded where Eastern's administrators had frequently failed. This episode came at a low point for the administrators: the legislature had just changed the penal code according to recommendations from a commission, not the administrators (over their objections). Now the legislature, acting on reformers' recommendations, had passed a law that directly affected the prison administrators' prescribed duties. Adding insult to injury, Eastern's administrators were not even notified of the Commutation Law's discussion or passage; as they explained, they learned of the law “from the lips of a convict under their care” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1862, Appendix, 9). This was unacceptable.

Administrators from both Eastern State Penitentiary and Western State Penitentiary wrote to the legislature, but Eastern's board of inspectors spearheaded the opposition. The inspectors argued that the law was “unnecessary” and deeply flawed (Annual Report, 1862, Appendix, 24). They questioned its legality and internal coherence, bemoaning the law's “looseness of expression, its conflicting provisions, the difficulty of reconciling its language with any proposed purpose.” They added pointedly: “The law itself is drawn by a most inexpert pen” (Annual Report, 1862, Appendix, 9). In the inspectors' view, the legislature had been misguided by amateurs. The inspectors compared the present legislature unfavorably to earlier bodies “too wise, to be led blindly by any zealous, though uninformed innovator” (Annual Report, 1862, Appendix, 26). Indeed, earlier in the prison's history, the legislature passed “wise legislation”—written “in conformity with [the inspectors'] suggestions” (Annual Report, 1862, Appendix, 8). That the present legislature had listened to PSAMPP members who had written and “caused the Act … to be enacted into a law” was particularly aggravating to the inspectors (Annual Report, 1862, Appendix, 27–28). The legislature, they argued, should have consulted them before passing the law. As prison administrators, they were experts in all penal matters and therefore should have been accorded the decisive role in shaping penal policy.

Had the legislature consulted Eastern's administrators, it would have learned the Commutation Law was entirely inappropriate for Pennsylvania's unique prisons, they explained. The Commutation Law had been modeled on the increasingly popular “Irish System,” a predecessor to parole involving early release for good behavior. As Eastern's inspectors argued, the Commutation Law, or the Irish System more generally, was only necessary at prisons following the Auburn System. Those prisons maintained prisoners for longer sentences than were typical at Eastern. There was no need, the inspectors argued, “to further shorten sentences” in Pennsylvania. The law was therefore unnecessary—and harmful. The law would “create so extreme a change in our prison discipline” as to jeopardize the Pennsylvania System (Annual Report, 1862, Appendix, 21). Early release would prevent the conditions necessary for reformation, encouraging prisoners to feign transformation rather than truly transform (Annual Report, 1862, Appendix, 24).

After recounting their objections to the law, Eastern's inspectors declared that they would not enforce it. Understandably troubled by this development, two Eastern inmates, William Johnson and Charles Langhammer, submitted independent habeas corpus claims to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, arguing that they should have been released under the law. As noted above, the court disagreed and, in the combined case of Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway, found the law unconstitutional.

The court's opinion repeated the inspectors' arguments, sometimes verbatim.Footnote ¹⁵ This was no accident; the court referenced the “printed report” submitted by Eastern's inspectors “with the entire concurrence of their colleagues of the Western [Penitentiary]” (Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway 1862, 447). Justice George Washington Woodward, writing for the court, was sympathetic to the administrators, their claims, and the Pennsylvania System. He began the opinion with a brief description and history of Pennsylvania's “admirable system of penitentiary punishment,” rehearsing the inspectors' own descriptions (Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway 1862, 447). It was a system, he wrote, that “by reason of the excellence of the conception and the fidelity of administration, has commanded the attention of the civilized world” (Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway 1862, 447). Echoing the inspectors, Woodward repeatedly stated that the 1861 Act would threaten the Pennsylvania System (Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway 1862, e.g., 447, 449).

The court also recognized the inspectors' claims to expertise. Woodward agreed: no one, including the legislature, knew how to manage Pennsylvania's unique prisons better than their administrators. Woodward echoed the inspectors' claims that evidence from “other states” was irrelevant because those states employed the Auburn System. He explained: “Our own experience under our peculiar system is opposed to all such attempts at alleviating prison discipline, and we think it may be safely trusted.” Foreshadowing later courts' deference to prison administrators (e.g., Bell v. Wolfish 1979; Spain v. Pecunier 1979; Hudson v. Palmer 1984; Wilson v. Seiter 1991; Farmer v. Brennan 1994), Woodward deferred to the prison administrators' judgment: “They [the prison's administrators] say it [the Commutation Law] would derange the system of administration long pursued. … We will not overrule their reasons nor control their discretion” (Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway 1862, 449).

Finally, the court recognized the inspectors' prerogative to be consulted before the legislature altered penal policy. According to Woodward, Eastern's administrators' “experience had qualified them for advising wisely in respect to the proposed measure” (Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway 1862, 447). The legislature should have sought the inspectors' advice. Woodward noted: “It is much to be regretted that the legislature of 1861” passed the Commutation Law “without consulting any of the officers to whom the system had been intrusted for administration” (Commonwealth ex rel. Johnson v. Halloway 1862, 447). In effect, the court acceded to the prison administrators' authority over the prison and penal policy.

The ruling in Johnson v. Halloway was the administrators' crowning achievement in their search for professional status. The state supreme court had publicly agreed that Eastern's administrators should have discretion over their prison, and that the legislature should not interfere. Boundary drawing between administrators and dilettantes—whether the legislature, PSAMPP, or other penal reformers—was essential to Eastern's administrators' claims to expertise. Now, an external party—Pennsylvania's supreme court, no less—recognized the expert status of Eastern's administrators above both the penal reformers and legislators. The court deferred to the administrators and affirmed that others should as well. At last, the administrators' authority was recognized.

Data and Objectivity as Early Bases of Defense and Expertise

Penal reformers and prison administrators' interest in scientific inquiry did not begin in the 1860s and 1870s. Those interested in penal reform (and governance more generally) had long used the language of experimentation (e.g., Ignatieff Reference Ignatieff1978). From the beginning, penal actors toured US prisons, exchanged surveys, and collected data—statistics on prison operations—to identify the superior approach to confinement (Rubin Reference Rubin2015). As the Pennsylvania System was the weaker of this pseudo-scientific project's two foci, Eastern's administrators used logical arguments and numerical data to defend their system against criticism, display its “superiority,” and ultimately demonstrate their expertise.

Data collection was central to the administrators' model of scientific inquiry and defense of the Pennsylvania System. For each annual report, Eastern's administrators anxiously compiled statistics on their prisoners' health and mortality, prisoners' apparent reformation and recidivism (measured by their return to Eastern), and the prison's operating costs. Administrators emphasized early and repeatedly that the figures and discussions in their reports allowed observers “to obtain[] a true knowledge of the Institution” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1835, 6). In the 1840s, Eastern's Physician Robert Given chided his reader, “it is only by comparison between extended tables of this kind [exhibiting the prison's health and mortality statistics], that anything like just and philosophic deductions can be drawn” about the appropriate mode of prison discipline (Physician, Annual Report, 1846, 31). Such statistics, they believed, would overcome the mistaken beliefs about the Pennsylvania System by disproving each of its proclaimed failures (Rubin Reference Rubin2013).

Increasingly, Eastern's administrators defended the Pennsylvania System by asserting that the system's critics were biased and refused to analyze the data objectively. While many administrators used this strategy, Physician Given provides a useful illustration. Given was the prison's physician from 1844 to 1851, the period in which the Pennsylvania System was increasingly charged with causing its prisoners' insanity, particularly by PSAMPP. As the prison's physician, Given bore the brunt of this charge. In response, he challenged the reformers' abilities to evaluate the data and their willingness or ability to do so without “prejudice.” In his last report, he cautioned that the Pennsylvania System's “friends” had initially been “so dazzled” by the system that they were “totally blind to its physical and mental evils.” Now, however, “the Institution [was] as blindly condemned as it was heretofore lauded” by this same group. If only observers could avoid judging the Pennsylvania System in “a partisan” manner, the physician had “the fullest confidence that its great moral superiority will be established” (Physician Given, Annual Report, 1852, 25–26). Moreover, “the respective partisans of both” camps must be “as faithful in reporting what contradicts, as they are ready to publish what supports, their cherished views” for commentators to recognize the Pennsylvania System's “superiority” (Physician, Annual Report, 1849, 28). If PSAMPP was so biased, neither its praise nor its criticism of the Pennsylvania System could be trusted.Footnote ¹⁶

In addition to undermining his opponents, Given also sought to establish his own objectivity and thus credibility. In an early report, he explained, “my object [in compiling statistics on prisoners' health and mortality] was not to bolster or prop any particular system of imprisonment, but to discharge conscientiously my duty as a public officer.” He sought to “throw[] every possible light on [the] question” (Physician, Annual Report, 1846, 51). As the prison's physician, it was important that others believed he was not simply repeating a party line when he addressed the question of whether the Pennsylvania System caused insanity. Thus, a few years later, while tallying prisoners' deaths, he included inmate No. 1909, even though, “[s]trictly speaking, No. 1909 was not a prisoner at the time of his death, as a pardon had arrived for him, a few days previously.” To maintain his own objectivity, however, the physician included “the case, because were I to avail myself of this pretext to withhold it, I feel that I should not be giving a fair representation of our mortality” (Physician, Annual Report, 1849, 28). Emphasizing objectivity allowed Given to establish his credibility and professionalism while distancing himself from the Pennsylvania System's “partisan” supporters.

Cultivating Scientific Expertise in an Unscientific Field

The administrators' dedication to data collection and objective analysis continued over time with little substantive change, as was true of the rest of the field. In the 1860s and 1870s, however, as science emerged as an authoritative framework, penal reformers' and prison administrators' discourse underwent a dramatic transformation. For example, “science” as such was not an explicit concern in Eastern's first dozen reports. References to the “moral science” could be found in these reports, but this phrase referred to philosophical considerations rather than a branch of physical or social science. The administrators' first references to science appeared sporadically in the 1840s, around the same time as they did by penal reformers at the national and international level (e.g., Gray Reference Gray1848; Inspectors, Annual Report, 1848, 3), but they became commonplace from 1859 onward.Footnote ¹⁷ By the 1860s and 1870s, Eastern's administrators routinely referred to the “prison science” or “penology,” sometimes as a “branch of social science” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1870, 13) or “as an element in social science” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1870, 33). Nationwide, the “penal science” became such a common refrain after the Civil War that most historians locate the emergence of “penal science” in the 1870s (e.g., Sullivan Reference Sullivan1990; Pisciotta Reference Pisciotta1994), despite the earlier references.

With the emergence of scientific language, Eastern's administrators aggressively extended their earlier reasoning, using penal science as an authoritative framework through which they could claim their system's superiority. As the inspectors explained: “In physical sciences successful experiment is proved by demonstration.” They had offered such a demonstration, which, they believed, should be sufficient. “If the united evidence of three decades, as to the practical effects of the separate system, cannot be relied on as exemplifying its real character, then one must look in vain for higher sanction than such cumulative evidence, to attest that which is claimed to be indubitable” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1859, 6). Their annual reports “prove beyond reasonable cavil, and in satisfaction of intelligent inquiry, that our system of penitentiary punishment compares favorably so far as its results are to be considered, with any system yet adopted” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1866, 25). No one had ever “successfully refuted” their claims that “the separate system is the safest, the best, the most scientific or philosophic system” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1870, 9–10).

The only explanation for the field's refusal to acknowledge the Pennsylvania System's superiority was that the field was simply unscientific. The Auburn System's popularity was the clearest evidence of that fact. For Eastern's administrators, the Auburn System represented the apogee of unscientific prison discipline. Central to penological doctrine, as they understood it, was the idea that criminals could change; science would reveal appropriate and successful ways to transform criminals into law-abiding citizens. By contrast, “[t]o congregate all classes of persons indiscriminately, … denies that penal science is progressive. It rejects the idea of improvement” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1860, 7–8). Worse, these prisons were not judged on their ability to transform prisoners. Instead, only “the most mercenary tests” were used to evaluate the systems, for example, does the prison “yield for profit” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1862, 43–44). Specifically, “[s]elf-supporting is the test of their prisons and penitentiaries, and those systems are regarded best, which yield the largest pecuniary returns from convict labor.” By contrast, “social science” was unconcerned with “the sordid and the selfish” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1866, 17). Unfortunately for Eastern's administrators, Auburn-style prisons were both the most common and most popular.

Repeating and extending their earlier arguments, Eastern's administrators described Auburn supporters as biased. As the inspectors claimed in their 1860 report, the Pennsylvania System “has struggled against ignorance and prejudice, resulting from an unwillingness to investigate its principles, or a disbelief in its utility” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1860, 21). The administrators argued that one had to be an “unprejudiced and disinterested student of penal science” to see the Pennsylvania System's success (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1870, 7–8). But, as the inspectors explained it, “[w]hen fully understood, carefully examined and tested by honest enquiry, vulgar prejudices will entirely disappear” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1854, 26). In such circumstances, when “fully and impartially investigated … the separate system of Penitentiary punishment converts, convinces and conquers” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1860, 8). If only observers would (objectively) look at the data, the administrators argued, the Pennsylvania System would be vindicated.

Other critics, even if they could muster objectivity, lacked the requisite kind and amount of knowledge to judge the system. As the inspectors explained, painfully aware of the recent attention penal discipline received at both the state and national levels, “[i]t is in vain to expect that a subject which has occupied the attention of deep thinkers and practical observers, for so long a period, can be understood by less than an impartial devotion to its study.” Such uninitiated observers form “crude opinions” but these ideas “will be most sensibly changed on a fuller acquaintance” with the penal science (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1860, 9). Identifying with “science” helped distinguish themselves from the uninitiated: “It is a science we are discussing. It is neither a whim, a caprice, an experiment, a notion, a job, nor a speculation. It is a science, consequently it is to be considered and investigated only as such subjects can be examined” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1870, 9–10). Critics, the administrators implied, had not invested the time and lacked the requisite knowledge to understand the Pennsylvania System; consequently, such persons' criticisms should be dismissed.

While undermining their critics by emphasizing their lack of qualifications, Eastern's administrators presented themselves as the only trustworthy commentators in the field—the real experts. As the inspectors noted, there were impostors “professing to be possessed of general information on penal science as applied to prison populations and systems of convict punishment, who entirely mistake the principles, and are ignorant of the practical results, which these Reports exhibit of the Pennsylvania system of Penitentiary convict discipline” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1871, 34). To bolster their claims, the administrators emphasized the difficulty of the subject and how extensively they had trained. Anyone seeking to compete, to achieve the same level of mastery over the subject, would require “large experience, most careful study, almost daily observation, and the examination of facts as they relate to principles, and of principles, as they are sustained by fact.” Emphasizing their firsthand experience with prisoners helped distinguish their expertise from that gained from books or intuition alone (reformers' sole basis of knowledge). In their 1875 annual report, Eastern's inspectors offered a “warning” to such amateurs about the difficulty of penal science: “as a science it is not to be mastered intuitively: that crude, ill-digested views are to be subjected to the crucial test of long, large, and continued thought and experience” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1875, 54–55). Understanding matters of penal discipline thus required the utmost rigor, serious dedication, and years of study and experience. Those who lacked this sort of knowledge and experience were simply not qualified to evaluate the Pennsylvania System. Eastern's administrators believed they were alone in their expertise.

Confronting the Other Pioneers of Penology

Despite Eastern's administrators' efforts, in the 1870s, the mantle of professional penologist was bestowed on other men. Two members of the New York Prison Association (NYPA), Enoch C. Wines and Theodore W. Dwight, toured the nation's prisons, which they later described in a widely-read report published in 1867. They called for and outlined a new “prison science” to achieve reformation. In addition to embracing science as enthusiastically as Eastern's administrators, these penal reformers also created the formal structures that signified professional status. Wines went on to found the National Prison Association in 1870, hosting increasingly frequent national and international prison congresses and publishing their various Proceedings and Transactions as repositories of penal knowledge. Zebulon Brockway, also of New York, became a particular darling at these meetings. Brockway had established a system of confinement for salvageable (i.e., young, but not juvenile, first-time) offenders involving labor, religion, and education at Elmira Reformatory, the nation's first adult reformatory. The Elmira System became the template for prisons built in this period (Pisciotta Reference Pisciotta1994; see also Sullivan Reference Sullivan1990).

From the perspective of Eastern's administrators, none of this was innovative; they had been endorsing the same factors—and (mostly) practicing what they preached—for decades.Footnote ¹⁸ That Wines, Brockway, and others were gaining such fame for their efforts was, therefore, particularly offensive to Eastern's administrators. The inspectors especially were devastated “that elsewhere than in Pennsylvania, … [men were] claiming the merit of bringing to the notice of thoughtful men the question of convict reform and penitentiary punishment, and the serious defects in the administration of penal laws.” For Eastern's inspectors, it was a matter of “justice to the State of Pennsylvania”—they were careful not to claim the insult to their own work—to recognize “the labors of some of her citizens for nearly a century” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1872, 22). Exacerbating the slight, this was the second time in the nineteenth century that New York had eclipsed Pennsylvania's role in penal reform.Footnote ¹⁹ Lack of recognition was particularly egregious because Eastern's administrators had long lamented that penal reformers, other prison administrators, and legislatures were neglecting Eastern's example. In their 1863 report, the inspectors expressed their “earnest hope, that their [annual reports'] utility might be recognized by all engaged in the important work of administering systems of prison discipline” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1863, 6). Months after Wines and Dwight's report was published, Eastern's inspectors sounded even more disheartened, complaining: “Public attention to [our reports] has been so often invited, and as yet with but so little interest excited in them.” The beleaguered inspectors felt “best satisfied yearly to increase the amount of this information, trusting that when these Reports shall be considered by earnest men, their labors will be thereby greatly aided in those investigations which will be regarded as of primary importance …” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1868, 23–24).

More was at stake than simply Eastern's reputation, however. For some administrators, this was personal—their professional status had become part of their identity. For example, by the 1870s, Richard Vaux had been an inspector at Eastern for nearly thirty years and president of the board of inspectors for more than twenty years. Between 1842, when he became secretary of the board, and his death in 1895, Vaux may have written most of the inspectors' annual reports (see Barnes [1927] Reference Barnes1968, 240) and they clearly reflected his influence. Vaux had been one of the most avid users of scientific discourse and, although a lawyer by training, he frequently presented himself as a “social scientist.” An 1870 issue of The Evening Telegraph introduced Eastern's annual report (probably forwarded by Vaux himself) with the subheading, “Hon. Richard Vaux as a Social Scientist—Facts, Figures, Theories, and Results” (The Evening Telegraph 1870). Despite having also served as the Recorder and Mayor of Philadelphia and in the US House of Representatives, Vaux's work as a penologist was central to his identity.Footnote ²⁰ It is not surprising, then, that he was furious when others in the field received more attention for similar work.

Administrators' outrage, expressed by Vaux, became palpable following two International Prison Congresses, organized by Wines, held in London (1872) and Stockholm (1878). Eastern's administrators had previously been receptive to similar congresses, as these congresses had been receptive to them.Footnote ²¹ The later congresses were not. Prison administrators from around the world had been asked to contribute written descriptions of prison discipline at their prison or in their country to enable scientific comparisons to determine the best mode of incarceration. Yet, in Vaux's opinion, “[w]hatever of merit these meetings may have promised,” their discussion increasingly focused on “collateral” questions rather than the important competition between separate and congregate confinement.Footnote ²² This shift in focus slighted Eastern, in Vaux's view, robbing it of its chance to shine when compared to other prisons. Repeating a standard argument, he also worried that the Pennsylvania System would not receive “that unbiased and calm investigation, which a liberal spirit of disinterested inquiry should have prompted” (Vaux Reference Vaux1872, iii).

Vaux's response was particularly heated following the Stockholm Congress of 1878. Writing the inspectors' annual report for that year, Vaux wrote dismissively of “the gentlemen who, by some process of appointment, were called the commissioners” of the Prison Congress, referring to Wines and to some extent Dwight, who also served as a US delegate (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 8). These commissioners had “no authoritative capacity” but were part of the congress “chiefly by complimentary appointment” (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 57). Not only had they taken on “the duty self-imposed,” but they were unscientific in their approach—a grave sin to the professional penologist (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 48). For example, the commissioners seemed to think the reason for the Congress “too apparent to need argument to prove it” (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 47). As Vaux explained, this approach was highly problematic: “To properly prepare such information as would be required for the direction of the thought and investigation of the members of these congresses, would have been the first duty of” its organizers (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 48).

Even worse, in Vaux's view, there was no substance to the meetings; the Congress dealt only superficially with penal science. For Vaux, “the failure to treat the subject of crime-cause, its origin, its prevention, or reformatory, or punitive systems of convict punishment, in that enlarged, enlightened, and scientific method which so pretentious an assembly gave reason to expect, is, perhaps, the most marked of all its [the Congress's] results” (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 49). Vaux explained that “[g]littering generalities might suffice for the formal and introductory meeting, when many who have never studied the foundation principles on which the science of crime punishment rests,” but this was neither the first meeting, nor was there an absence of data to review (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 48).

Undergirding Vaux's criticism was the Congress's failure to consult the evidence produced at Eastern: “The statistical information published during the past ten years by this Penitentiary, limited as true it is to one State Penitentiary, should have been at least considered if not mentioned by the eminent and learned scientists who met to deliberate on the subjects” (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 56). Vaux did not describe his complaint as a matter of pride; rather, he believed it indicated the organizers' and participants' ineligibility to discuss the topic: “If so inconsiderable a source of information was unknown to the members who met at this Congress, it might be assumed that the careful research and investigation, which give value to scientific opinion, were wanting even to render the ‘formulated conclusions' worthy of the name of authority” (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 56–57). As Vaux knew, the Congress's proceedings would be considered authoritative and receive high praise, despite their lack of rigor.

In closing, Vaux explained why he had criticized the Stockholm Prison Congress. He discussed the Congress “only to emphasize the efforts made in Philadelphia during the past twenty years.” Ultimately, he sought to “protect them from that relegation into obscurity, which the ignorance of their character and the results that have been attained from them can even temporarily effect.” Perhaps speaking to himself more than to his addressees, Vaux instructed “[t]hose who have an earnest interest in the many most important subjects” of penal science “not to be discouraged” (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 57). One day, penal science would be treated as a true science. When they “enlist unostentatious students and thinkers, who, starting from the foundation, will seek to master all the principles” and “the material is obtained after patient labor and exhaustive investigation,” then the field would benefit from rigorous and “authoritative” findings (Vaux, Annual Report, 1879, 57–58). Until then, dilettantes would continue to receive attention for their “[g]littering generalities,” limited knowledge, and unsophisticated methods, and penal science would remain limited. So long as Wines and his ilk remained in the spotlight, Vaux believed, Eastern's illustrious history, and its administrators with it, would remain neglected and obscure.

Unfortunately for Eastern's administrators, Vaux's fear came to pass. After independently pioneering professionalization techniques for decades, Eastern's administrators slowly joined the very upstarts they had condemned as poor imitators. By the 1880s, the inspectors requested the warden to regularly attend these national meetings (e.g., Warden, Annual Report, 1888, 134). Eastern's administrators also began instituting other conventional markers of professionalization for their staff, including hiring men with specific qualifications and establishing a “training school” to train prison “officers,” now rarely called “overseers” (Inspectors, Annual Report, 1880, 87; 1888, 129–30). Such requirements would only increase in the coming years as Eastern's administrators continued to conform to field-wide trends (e.g., Warden, Annual Report, 1930, 9).

Primitive Professionalization

This study has described Eastern's administrators' efforts in “primitive professionalization,” the professionalization that takes place before or at least independently of field-wide efforts to professionalize. Standard approaches to understanding professionalization examine the formation of formal structures occupational groups use to establish their professional status (e.g., Wilensky Reference Wilensky1964; Abbott Reference Abbott1988). These structures include university training programs and national networks or associations. Throughout this process, however, Eastern's administrators lacked such markers to designate their professional status. As forerunners of field-wide professionalization, they had to construct their own, isolated pathway to professionalization. Consequently, they relied entirely on discursive strategies. Although their efforts were unsuccessful in some ways—establishing themselves as professionals on the national stage—they may have been useful at the local level. Such small-scale victories are often missed in traditional analyses of national-level professionalization.

This study also calls attention to the tension between the strategies and timing of professionalization. Andrew Abbott's canonical text on professionalization suggests that the primary threat to a group's professional claims is the loss of the activity or professional task itself, as when technologies change. Threats from other groups are minimal: when late-comers try to claim professional status after a group has already done so, the late-comers inevitably lose (Abbott Reference Abbott1988, 91–96). In the present case, however, it was the latecomers who succeeded; this study suggests that field-level organization may be more important than claiming professional status first. Indeed, it may be that primitive professionalization will never overcome more formal, field-wide professionalization, but this is a question for future work.

Penal Strife

Studying the primitive professionalization of Eastern's administrators further reveals the strife surrounding the new, modern prisons. Punishment scholars have become increasingly attuned to the “struggle” behind ostensibly well-established penal policy and trends (e.g., Goodman, Page, and Phelps forthcoming). Frequently, however, prison development has been described in terms of a general consensus. For example, while intense debate over the Pennsylvania and Auburn models characterized this period, official prison policy was highly homogenous across the country, as almost all states adopted the Auburn System (Rubin Reference Rubin2015). This superficial national homogeneity, however, hides tremendous divisions at the state level about the shape of punishment. Scholars have focused on prisoner, guard, family member, and labor union resistance to penal policy and practice in this period (e.g., Meranze Reference Meranze1996; McLennan Reference McLennan2008), but have overlooked contention among officials who are often assumed to be aligned. Likewise, most prison historians interested in divisions between reformers and administrators have focused primarily on the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. Scholars have shown how reformers who became administrators left behind their ideals (e.g., Rafter Reference Rafter1985; Pisciotta Reference Pisciotta1994) and how control-oriented administrators co-opted idealistic reformers' proposed practices (e.g., Jacobs Reference Jacobs1977; Rothman Reference Rothman1980). These analyses overlook the contention surrounding the early prisons.

Eastern has offered a unique but useful case study for examining such conflict. Among early prisons, Eastern's internal administration is frequently assumed to be most aligned with reformers' desires. It is frequently referred to as the “Quaker prison,” the most religiously invested prison, and the prison most concerned with prisoner reformation (e.g., Welch Reference Welch2015). In reality, while Pennsylvania's reformers and prison administrators were united in their support for the Pennsylvania System, they were divided by their respective plans for implementing the system. Even in a state that fiercely resisted national penal trends on ideological grounds, the meaning of prison was contested (Janofsky Reference Janofsky2004) and alliances among reformers, administrators, and legislators were unstable and shifting. Rather than mere extensions of the reformer community, even these ideological prison administrators explicitly tried to distance themselves from the penal reformers as both groups sought to influence the legislature. Ultimately, this study has shown that even in the early, idealistic days of the modern prison, divisions emerged as prison administrators, penal reformers, and state legislators jockeyed for power and influence over the shape of their state's prison regime.