In the nineteenth century a movement arose based on sixteenth-century European educational reform movements that changed the concept of a child from a "miniature adult" to an individual with less fully developed cognitive capacity. This resulted in children being separated from adult offenders in many U.S. prisons and jails.
Among the reforms made by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 were the following; Rehabilitation was dropped as a goal of punishment. Sentencing guidelines will be established by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which will be established by the U.S. Congress. Defining all federal sentences as determinate. Making sentence appeals possible.
Prisons. The only comfort prisoners had in the cold, damp, filthy, rat- and roach-infested prisons of medieval Europe was what they could—or rather were required to—buy. The prison-keeper charged for blankets, mattresses, food, and even the manacles (chains).
Just as in Europe, physical punishment was common in colonial America. Americans used stocks, pillories, branding, flogging, and maiming—such as cutting off an ear or slitting nostrils—to punish offenders. The death penalty was used frequently.
The medieval church sometimes used long-term incarceration to replace executions. Some wealthy landowners built private prisons to enhance their own power, imprisoning those who dared dispute their pursuit of power or oppose their whims. With the enactment of King Henry II 's set of ordinances, called the Assize of Clarendon (England, 1166), many crimes were classified as offenses against the "king's peace" and were punished by the state and not by the church, the lord, or the victim's extended family. At this time the first prisons designed solely for incarceration were constructed.
Supreme Court, punishment has at least four justifications: deterrence, societal retribution, rehabilitation, and incapacitation —the last category intended to protect society by permanently incarcerating those who cannot be reformed.
However, a growing number of prison reformers were beginning to believe that the prison system should be more committed to reform. In 1870 the newly established National Prison Association (which later became the American Correctional Association) met in Cincinnati, Ohio, and issued a Declaration of Principles.
ELMIRA REFORMATORY. The superintendent of the Elmira Reformatory in New York, Zebulon Brockway (1827–1920), used some of these ideas when New York opened the reformatory in 1876 for male offenders sixteen to thirty years old. Brockway believed that rehabilitation could be achieved through education.
Despite the efforts of reformers, most societies prefer that prisons pay their own way. To do this, prison administrators have at times constructed factories within prison walls or hired inmates out as laborers in "chain gangs." In rural areas inmates worked on prison-owned farms. In the South prisoners—predominantly African-American—were often leased out to local farmers. Prison superintendents justified the hard labor as teaching the offenders the value of work and self-discipline. Many free citizens, after all, earned their livings doing such work in factories and fields. Some penologists (those who study prison management) believe that the harshness of the prisons made these inmates more vindictive against society.