Purpose and History Paper

Purpose and History Paper

The judicial systems that can be found around the world today were not always how things worked.  This is the result of a lot of attempts to make people take responsibility for their actions and pay their debts to those who they have wronged in the process.  The systems that are being used today were not created instantly.  There was a lot of research and hard work that had to be put in by a lot of people to achieve what can now be found in police stations, courtrooms, and in corrections facilities around the world.  At one point in time, people started to come up with ways to punish others for the offenses that they had committed, both formally and informally.  These punishments evolved over time and continued to change to this day.  With this change, the facilities that would hold these offenders had to be created and updated over time to meet the needs that would present themselves.  As with everything else in the world, each facility has its own characteristics; both physically and operationally.  To meet the operational demands of these facilities, a prison labor system has been created over time that allows inmates to work during their time in confinement.

Punishments can be traced back to as early as 2700  B.C. when Gildamesh, the Samarian King of Uruk was reigning (Lyons, 2003).  According to Lyons (2003), several hundred years later, the earliest example of a legal code can be identified in the Ur-Nammu code.  Lyons states that this is the first documentation of the power struggle between the temple and the state being referenced.  

As legal codes and punishment came about and began to become more standardized over time, facilities had to be developed to house the offenders as they served their punishments.  The use of prisons began as a temporary stop before being sentenced to death or sent off to a life of slavery ("Prison History", 2016).  According to “Prison History” (2016), political prisoners and prisoners of war were housed in these facilities as well.  As time went on, civilization changed and the idea of rehabilitating prisoners while they were inside these prisons began to take shape, as also stated in "Prison History" (2016).

While prisons were being created and implemented, the best way to operate them was still not known.  As procedures were developed, some of them were found to be less effective than originally planned.  As more prisons were built and put into service, other means of operating them were implemented and alterations to the architecture of the prison were made to accommodate these changes (Seiter, 2014, ).  According to Seiter (2014), when the state of Pennsylvania opened its first two prisons in 1826 and 1829, they used a system that would become known as the Pennsylvania system.  Seiter also stated that this system was known as the separate and silent system.  Over time, flaws were identified within this system, and the need for changes would become evident.  When the state of New York opened a prison in Auburn in 1817, it was developed with a similar model as the Pennsylvania prisons, according to Seiter.  However, as Seiter pointed out, they would soon find that the separate and silent model had severe deficiencies and needed modifications.  The Auburn system was then developed, and the congregate and silent model was born (Seiter, 2014).