Punishment's “Square Deal”

Abstract

In New York State, the years between 1917 and 1933 saw the dissolution of the remnants of the first great American prison system and the formation of a distinctive new penal order. In the long 1920s, mass cultural, associative, and psycho-medical penal practices finally eclipsed the industrial labor regime of the 19th century prison, while state officials ritually declared the death of the “barbaric old system” and the striking of a mutually advantageous “square deal” between convicts and keepers. Contrary to historiographical orthodoxy, innovative administrators and inspired reformers did not, by themselves, create this new carceral regime. Rather, the system emerged out of the sometimes bloody confrontations that transpired between convicts, guards, labor leaders, industrialists, prison wardens, reformers, and political leaders in the years following the abolition of convict leasing in 1894.