Charles Dickens Quotes
The System is rigid, strict and hopeless solitary confinement, and I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong.
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Charles Dickens, 1812-1890, English Writer, Comment on his visit to Eastern State Prison in Philadelphia, PA, Pictures from Italy and American Notes for General Circulation
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This Pennsylvania prison was supposedly a “modern” reform in law enforcement. Rather than work gangs or mandatory factory work, this was the first “penitentiary” in America. The guilty convicts would be in a small cell for all but 1 hour or less a day, and the only thing in the cell other than soap and a toothbrush was a Bible. The convict was supposed to spend his sentence reading th Bible and being penitent for his crimes. It destroyed most inmates mentally until the Supreme Court Ruled total solitary confinement was unconstitutional. There are a fee high security prisons today where there is no social contact allowed the inmates and their constitutionality is being litigated based on Miller’s 1890 opinion. Another point that this quotation illustrates is that sometimes reform efforts produce a situation that was worse than before.
Russia, under the Czar, had a brutal criminal justice system where criminals—often with their families—were forced across Russia to Siberia and Sakhalin. Stalin and the Communists did not invent the Gulag concept but then, although total enemies of the Czar and everything he stood for, emulated the worst of Czarist policies to deal with the Russian “enemies” of the state. The reference to “red-nosed prison supervisors” was to the image of the alcoholism that was (and still is) rampant among so many Russians—especially the prison supervisors who themselves were exiled to the harshest and remotest parts of the nation. They were notoriously heavy drinkers even be Russian standards.
On a tour of America, Dickens visited Eastern State Penitentiary, a Pennsylvania prison opened in 1829 which was supposedly a “modern” reform in law enforcement. Rather than work gangs or mandatory factory work and filthy living conditions, this was the first “penitentiary” in America. The guilty convicts would be in a small clean but bare cell for all but 1 hour or less a day, and the only thing in the cell other than soap and a toothbrush was a Bible. The convict was supposed to spend his entire sentence reading the Bible and being penitent for his crimes. It destroyed most inmates mentally until the Supreme Court ruled in 1890 that total solitary confinement was unconstitutional.
Although this is generally followed as a legal principle in America, states like Texas have executed felons who most other jurisdictions would see as Coke’s “mad man.”
This quotation while difficult for us to fathom today, illustrates a very conservative 18th century view of punishment and law enforcement. The South African high court was very distressed that torture was to be ended. To them, and many others throughout the so called “civilized” European cultures of the time, capital punishment was not a very good deterrent—even for slaves. The execution was usually accompanied by horrible torture and cruelty before death. Slavery was such a horrible life, and the White colonists knew it, that death could be welcome (many slaves had committed suicide). So the suffering at the execution was to serve as a further deterrent. In reality it did not, any more than capital punishment did in the 20th century, but by the logic of the culture and the times, torture was needed as well as capital punishment.
The issue of immigration was being debated in Congress.
Named after penal reformer Johne Howard, 1726-1790. Howard Associations have since been organized in many countries.
Major Fleener had been assigned to defend accused terrorists who were being held at the military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. For several years they were held without a hearing or trial. Then the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that they had to be given a hearing or trial. A Military tribunal was selected. The methods and procedures of these hearings came under much public world-wide criticism as they did not meet the normal legal standards of most countries. Surprisingly, one of the military officers made public statements criticizing the army and the trials.
Livermore's argument fell on deaf ears, and the amendment was passed over the objection of a few arch-conservatives.
Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
