True believers, rational actors, and bad actors: Placing The Prison and the Factory in penal-historiographic context
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520918813 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Author | Ashley T Rubin |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review Symposium: The Prison and the Factory (40th Anniversary Edition) |
Punishment & Society
True believers, rational
2020, Vol. 22(5) 736–744
! The Author(s) 2020
actors, and bad actors:
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520918813
Placing The Prison
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
and the Factory in
penal-historiographic
context
Ashley T Rubin
University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA
Keywords
penal reformers, prison administrators, prison history, prisons
Introduction
This review contextualizes The Prison and the Factory in the broad sweep of prison
historiography (at least, prison historiography from a US perspective). To this end,
I describe three approaches to how scholars have explained the birth of the prison
and associated early penal reforms. I then use this framework to describe The
Prison and the Factory somewhat paradoxically: at the time, The Prison and the
Factory was particularly radical but, by comparison to the current literature’s level
of explicit critique, it seems almost mild today. Finally, using this framework, I
make a global critique of The Prison and the Factory, but it is also a critique that
applies to each of these approaches to prison history.
Corresponding author:
Ashley T Rubin, Department of Sociology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, 213 Saunders Hall, 2424 Maile Way,
Honolulu, HI 96822-2217, USA.
Email: atrubin@hawaii.edu
Rubin
737
Three approaches to prison history
Institutional histories of prisons typically offer one of three opposing perspectives
on the motivations underlying penal reform. Penal reformers and prison admin-
istrators in these accounts are variously described as the benevolent true believer,
the managerial rational actor, and the unscrupulous bad actor. The popularity of
these characterizations roughly corresponds to classic prison history (pre–1960),
the opening of critical analyses of prison history (1960–2010), and a new hyper-
critical approach to prison history (2010–present).1 These three approaches each
tend to correspond with the dominant posture of historical (and, more broadly,
academic) thought in the US and, at times, the Western World.2 In establishing
this framework, I argue that while each of these approaches has much to offer,
none of these frameworks alone accurately describes the behavior or apparent
motivations of those responsible for penal reform and practice.
Old-school histories: The benevolent true believer
For most of the twentieth century, standard histories of early US prisons were
consistent with contemporary historians’ Whiggish tendencies and preference for
“Great Man” narratives. They offered exceptionally detailed accounts focusing
primarily on the legal reforms and on penal reformers and prison administrators’
public activities. These histories depicted reformers and prison administrators as
well-intentioned men (and sometimes women) who largely succeeded in achieving
their benevolent goals, including replacing colonial era capital and corporal pun-
ishments with the (ostensibly) more humane punishment of incarceration (e.g.,
Barnes, 1918, 1922, 1968 [1927]; Lewis, 1922; McKelvey, 1977 [1936]; Teeters,
1937, 1955; Teeters and Shearer, 1957).3
Indeed, scholars in this vein tended to link reformers and administrators’ efforts
to a theological commitment, focusing in particular on the work of Quakers, or to
a genuine belief that their work was benevolent and humane. Most of these
accounts took the reformers at their word that they wished to help the less fortu-
nate. Writing in this style much more recently, Norman Johnston has noted,
“Eastern State Penitentiary was a remarkable symbol of the optimism, energy,
and good intentions of that period of the 19th century during which
Philadelphia and the rest of the country believed that anything was possible in
the new republic” (Johnston, 2004: 39). In such accounts, reformers and admin-
istrators were essentially true believers, or those who were genuinely committed to
their reforms as morally superior or necessary modes of punishment. Overall, these
accounts were generally more descriptive than analytical; they were also fairly
acritical. True, early prison historians sometimes expressed some skepticism
about public reports about how well the prisons functioned in practice, even briefly
describing various gaps between theory and practice (including the use of torture
punishments; e.g., Barnes,1968 [1927]: 162–163, 376–380). However, these scholars
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Punishment & Society 22(5)
rarely pushed such insights further or questioned penal reformers and prison
administrators’ motivations beyond suggestions that they sought to save face.
Revisionist histories: The self-interested rational actor
Slowly, in the middle of the twentieth century, slightly more critical accounts
emerged (e.g., Lewis, 1965; Sellin, 1953, 1958), focusing greater attention on the
gaps between theory and practice. However, it was really in the 1970s, as a more
critical bent took shape across Western history departments and scholars moved
from the Great Man histories to social...
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