“The Eye of God”

Abstract

At the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, prison reformers were engaged in a broad debate about punishment, legal theories, and the rehabilitation of criminals. At that time, philosophical and theological arguments were tightly entangled. Eastern State Penitentiary, built in 1829 in Philadelphia by Quakers, was the sole, radical example of a strict regime of solitary confinement, and became the embodiment of a Christian view of punishment as penitence. This article suggests a reading of Eastern State within its Christian background and raises the broader issue of how Christian beliefs influenced the modern philosophy of punishment.