Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An 1855 engraving of New York's Sing Sing Penitentiary, which also followed the Auburn System. The Auburn system (also known as the New York system and Congregate system) is an American penal method of the 19th century in which prisoners worked during the day in groups and were kept in solitary confinement at night, with enforced silence at all times.
Constructed in 1816 [5] as Auburn Prison, it was the second state prison in New York (after New York City's Newgate, 1797–1828), the site of the first execution by electric chair in 1890, and the namesake of the "Auburn system," a correctional system in which prisoners were housed in solitary confinement in large rectangular buildings, and ...
The Auburn system's combination of congregate labor in prison workshops and solitary confinement by night became a near-universal ideal in United States prison systems, if not an actual reality. Under the Auburn system, prisoners slept alone at night and labored together in a congregate workshop during the day for the entirety of their fixed ...
The Auburn State Prison's South Wing was opened in the Spring of 1817, and fifty-three prisoners were transferred there from nearby counties. [3] Lynds was made the first principal keeper, and four years afterwards he became Warden of Auburn State Prison. Lynds devised the main features of the Auburn System of imprisonment. [4]
The Auburn system developed as an alternative to the Pennsylvania system and gradually replaced its predecessor. In the Auburn system, the prisoners worked during the day and were kept in solitary confinement at night. Silence was enforced at all times, and talking and other rule-breaking behaviors were severely punished. [1] [15]
The Pennsylvania system was opposed contemporaneously by the Auburn system (also known as the New York system), which held that prisoners should be forced to work together in silence, and could be subjected to physical punishment (Sing Sing prison was an example of the Auburn system). Although the Auburn system was favored in the United States ...
Discover the latest breaking news in the U.S. and around the world — politics, weather, entertainment, lifestyle, finance, sports and much more.
State Prison at Sing Sing, New York, an 1855 engraving. Sing Sing was the fifth prison constructed by New York state authorities. In 1824, the New York Legislature gave Elam Lynds, warden of Auburn Prison and a former United States Army captain, the task of constructing a new, more modern prison.