The Question of Suffering: Debating Religion in the American Prison, 1830–50

By the 1830s, New York State hosted two criminal institutions renowned for their severe regimes. Inmates complained of endless lashing and backbreaking labor. Legislators quarreled over the nature and aims of the penitentiary. New Yorkers had inaugurated a new system of prison discipline – one that assumed religion’s central role in inmate reformation and prison administration – as one of many aspects of a broader reforming program. Many interested onlookers, however, were disappointed with the prisons’ development. Partisans argued about whether an institution with a Christian imprint could tolerate physical and psychological suffering. Protestant reformers from the Prison Discipline Society of Boston responded to tales of prisoner abuse by articulating a policy of proper inmate suffering and sponsoring prison chaplains to work toward that ideal inside institutions. Inspired by their revivalist Calvinism, these reformers promoted a theory of inmate reformation patterned on a typical plan of salvation that led from sin and suffering to redemption and wholesome living. These advocates hoped to perfect the prison by ensuring proper suffering with only limited physical manifestations that would lead inmates toward spiritual reclamation. These reformers faced opponents who argued that religion ought to serve the state’s disciplinary interests, which mandated inmates’ physical and psychological submission through afflictive experiences. According to these proponents, prison chaplains were obliged to provide interpretations of prison experience that justified suffering as the proper response to criminal activity. Because both sides assumed the importance of religion, but disagreed vehemently about the levels of suffering that a religious institution could permit, their debates served as one of many destabilizing forces in antebellum prison development. Conflicts over religion and suffering, along with forces such as debates over economics and labor, democratic development and the impact of slavery, undermined what many reformers hoped would be a progressive development in American punishment.