What Is the Purpose of Work in Prisons?
(sidebar) Ever since the first prisons, work has been ubiquitous in prison life. Before prisons were established, fines, lashings, or the stocks sufficed for most minor offenses and property crimes. For more serious crimes, offenders were sentenced to public admonitions, expulsion from the community, and very occasionally the death penalty. But in 1557, in an attempt to deal with the problems of vagrancy and idleness, the city of London decided to abandon the old corporal punishments and instead detain vagrants in workhouses. During their sentences, which could range from weeks to years, inmates were required to engage in hard labor and to receive training in crafts and trades. Officials hoped this would change their “habit of idleness” into a “habit of industry,” and ultimately allow them to earn an honest living. Detention in workhouses quickly became the standard punishment for vagrants and the idle. Indeed, the planning for the first workhouse in the American colonies began in 1629
