History from the inside out: Prison life in nineteenth-century Massachusetts

To date, historical accounts of the American prison have focused on reformers and the question of social control, largely ignoring the prisoners and lower-level prison staff. But records from the Massachusetts State Prison at Charleston provide important clues about: prisoners and their guards, and they remind us that their actions Coo affected the development of the institution. This essay focuses on two aspects of prison life at the Charlestown prison in the early nineteenth century; first, it takes a close look at the notion that prisons were ''seminaries of vice.'' Prisoners were ''misbehaving,'' to be sure, but: the specific nature of their actions highlights important contradictions in the rehabilitative agenda. Second, the essay examines the educational program at Charlestown. Teaching the prisoners to read and write was a key feature of their rehabilitation, and institutional records reveal how prisoners influenced the development of the educational program. By bringing prisoners back into the picture, and by understanding their actions as a significant force in the development of the prison, this essay suggests a more dynamic history of the prison, one in which reformers, officials, and prisoners themselves engaged in a process of negotiation over the terms and conditions of confinement.