The penitentiary made incarceration itself the punishment for the first time.

Evidence

The penitentiary as an institution that simultaneously punished and rehabilitated its inhabitants was a new system of punishment that first made its appearance in the United States around the time of the American Revolution. This new system was based on the replacement of capital and corporal punishment by incarceration. … Imprisonment itself was new neither to the United States nor to the world, but until the creation of this new institution called the penitentiary, it served as a prelude to punishment. People who were to be subjected to some form of corporal punishment were detained in prison until the execution of the punishment. With the penitentiary, incarceration became the punishment itself. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 63

Categorization

• DEFINE: Draws the definitional line between mere imprisonment awaiting punishment and the penitentiary where confinement is the punishment — a key conceptual pivot in Davis’s argument.
• XREF: connects to: The prison was originally embraced as a humane replacement for capital and corporal punishment. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 101; Imprisonment only became conceivable once individual rights were recognized; The rise of the prison institutionalized the power to punish — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 209

Related

• The rise of the prison institutionalized the power to punish (similarity 0.84)
• The penitentiary was framed as a progressive reform of its era. (similarity 0.84)
• The prison was originally embraced as a humane replacement for capital and corporal punishment. (similarity 0.84)
• Imprisonment became the primary punishment because it suited capitalist bourgeois ideology, not superior merit. (similarity 0.81)
• The penitentiary mirrored chattel slavery in its structure and daily regime. (similarity 0.80)
• Prison integrated correctional transformation into legal detention from the start (similarity 0.80)
• Modern universal imprisonment was not the reformers’ original design (similarity 0.79)
• Prisons create the illusion that free people’s rights and liberties are secured by imprisonment. (similarity 0.79)
• Solitary confinement was once seen as emancipatory, not torturous (similarity 0.78)
• Punishment is so corporatized that mainstream companies now stake themselves in its perpetuation (similarity 0.78)
• Punishment’s meaning is fashioned through institutional symbiotic relationships (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The prison was originally embraced as a humane replacement for capital and corporal punishment. #corroborates (0.70) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 101
• Imprisonment only became conceivable once individual rights were recognized #expands (0.50)