American Capitalism and the Decline of Debtors’ Prison in the 19th Century

Abstract

This paper examines the dynamics of capitalism and the penitentiary system through an analysis of the decline of debt imprisonment in 19th-century United States. It argues that class transformations in the early to mid-1800s created a context for social experiments with new forms of punishment. The penitentiary systems that formed developed logics that contingently fit with the rising mode of production. The decline of debt imprisonment, in this context, was much in part the result of transformations in class power and class structure.

Keywords

capitalism class debt crime prison sociology US history

Introduction

In 1834, a novel was published titled The Debtors’ Prison: A Tale of a Revolutionary Soldier. It was a piece of political propaganda written to show both the suffering caused by debtors’ prisons for those in debt, along with the ways such prisons were ineffective for creditors. The novel begins with an exhausted, apparently almost dead, elderly man who appears upon a family’s door one evening. The family takes him in and nurses him back to health. They then speculate on who he is. The wife, for instance, guesses he escaped from the horrors of Simsbury Mine, the notorious ex-copper mine turned prison (Phelps, 1860). It turns out the man is a Revolutionary War veteran. He says while he fought for freedom, liberty, and equality, these principles were not yet realized as, ‘our citizens are deprived of their liberty, for no fault of their own. They are incarcerated for debt. They are punished for misfortune’ (Greene, 1834: 27).

The man, James Freeman, born in Middlesex, Massachusetts, then tells the story of how he was a victim of this barbarous punishment. He fought at many famous moments during the Revolutionary War and suffered wounds in the name of freedom. After the war he was rewarded with government securities. While he was convinced these might eventually be redeemed, he needed money. So, like many soldiers, he sold them below value for cash. Already struggling due to the hyperinflation of the continental currency, Freeman went into debt to obtain materials and livestock for the farm he rented. His crops failed, and much of his livestock died due to bad weather and disease. While the misfortune was not his fault, his landlord pressured him for payment and threatened to put him in jail. Following this, ‘he left me; and shortly afterwards my goods were seized for rent, my wife and children turned into the street, and my own person arrested for debt’ (Greene, 1834: 47–48).

This story, in which Freeman was immorally treated as a criminal rather than a victim of misfortune, is an example of shifting attitudes toward debt, criminality, and imprisonment that formed by the 1830s. Debt had been seen as a personal relationship in which creditors could directly punish debtors, even for extremely small amounts, by imprisoning them. But as new forms of criminality arose in the development of capitalism, indebtedness was increasingly viewed as the result of forces, especially market forces, outside of individual control, save for the exception of fraud. As market relations became more generalized over society, everyone was subjected to the risk of surviving as a market dependent actor. In this context, social attitudes toward debt imprisonment transformed. Reformers argued that imprisonment was an immoral legacy of the past it was time to eliminate.

To explain this shift, I argue for the centrality of class transformation as an explanatory factor that created the social and political conditions for the decline of imprisonment for debt, at least in its older, personalized form. After all, imprisonment for debt, in different forms, still exists today (Colgan, 2018; Leonetti, 2023). But the rise of capitalist class relations dramatically changed both institutions of punishment and prison, and forms of debt imprisonment. Politics and state formation were central to this. The creation of certain variations of capitalist states encouraged transformations in types of criminalization, policing, and penal punishment. This history was structured around or overdetermined by class forces, but highly contingent on the specifics of how the process developed in each case. And while some existing perspectives do mention the word capitalism, none of them situate the decline of debt imprisonment specifically in the context of the history of capitalist social and class relationships. By not doing this, capitalism appears as a market relationship, rather than a complex amalgam of exploitative class relations through which market relations are produced.

The development of the penitentiary was also a racialized process, part of the making of the ‘racial state’ (Goldberg, 2002; Omi and Winant, 2015). As Linebaugh and Rediker (2000), among others, have shown, the creation of both the US and global proletariat, the ‘many-headed hydra’, was built around a racial hierarchy and a variety of degrees of labor ‘freedom’ and ‘unfreedom’. Forms of social punishment reflected this inequality. As will be discussed, as the penitentiary was born, from the start, it disproportionally targeted the Black proletariat.

Conceptually, this study returns to Marxist historiography and theory, not as a dogmatic theoretical assertion, but due to the long history of historical materialist perspectives on the transition to capitalism and rise of the modern penitentiary. In various ways, Marxist perspectives have shown how class transformation was constitutive of the establishment of capitalism as the world’s dominant mode of production. Through engagement with these perspectives, the decline of debt imprisonment can be seen as a process resulting from class formation and division. Following this, the paper provides a narrative of how debt imprisonment operated and how class relations transformed early American social life, setting the context for new forms of discipline, punishment, and criminality. Central to this was the rise of the penitentiary. As crime shifted toward a more universal system of classification and punishment, and was refined around new ideas of criminality, and as criminalized acts were expressed through the market, the intersection of class and state led to new ways of punishing those who could not pay their debts. How this developed was also specifically shaped by the politics, and penal inventions, of social reformers, many who were inspired by Christian ideals of charity (Meranze, 1996: 143).

Finally, this paper contributes to debates over the role of force, violence, and use of diverse unfree labor forms in the history of capitalism. Although there are still perspectives in historical materialism that centralize the wage-labor/capital relation, other perspectives emphasize the fact that there have historically been many forms of labor exploited by capital (Banaji, 2011; Gerstenberger, 2022; McNally, 2020; Parisot, 2019; Rioux et al., 2020). One of these was penal labor. More generally, while the penitentiary was not the inevitable result of capitalism, and modes of punishment within capitalism have taken many forms in many contexts, it has proven to be quite useful for sustaining the bourgeois social order. For example, it disciplines and controls the racialized and gendered working classes and operates as a space for organizing the acceptable limits and rules of behavior between capitalists. Overall, the history of capitalism is as much a history of violence and force as it is of ‘free’ markets.

Perspectives: history and theory

The reason imprisonment for debt declined is a source of debate. The most thorough study remains Coleman’s book Debtors and Creditors in America, first published in the 1970s. He argues that debtors’ prison slowly became obsolete. Gradually, over many decades, the United States moved into an age of generalized, depersonalized market relations, large corporations, a uniform legal system supported by professional lawyers, new ways of calculating credit and systems of collateral for loans, and, effectively, a modern, market-based economy supported by a modern state. Debt imprisonment was not economically effective in recovering debts, nor was it necessary or humane in this new social order, ‘thus the debtors’ prison crumbled primarily because most creditors no longer had need of it’ (Coleman, 1999: 269).

After Coleman, perhaps the second most significant study of the process is Mann’s Republic of Debtors. The author documents a transition from failure to pay debt as a ‘moral failure, not a business risk’, through the ways debtor–creditor relations transformed with the rise of increasingly commercialized impersonal economic relations (Mann, 2002: 3). This account is especially unique for highlighting the way that the rise of an indebted, market dependent post-Revolutionary bourgeoisie likely influenced the creation of new ways of managing debt and bankruptcy (Mann, 2002: 102). Debt imprisonment would continue for many decades after the Revolution, especially as a tool used against poor debtors. Still, debt imprisonment eventually declined due to the rise of the country as ‘a commercial republic’ (Mann, 2002: 256). With a market economy, and new ideas of legitimate economic risk, gradually, debt imprisonment was replaced with bankruptcy laws.

In another interpretation, Baker, Cosgel, and Miceli make an economic case for the end of the practice. They argue that the goal of debt imprisonment was to try to force debtors to reveal assets they might be hiding from creditors. The reason debtors’ prisons faded over time was due to economic irrationality. Imprisoning debtors was expensive and inefficient, and was replaced with other techniques. They follow Coleman, suggesting the practice ended due to ‘economic obsolescence’ (Baker et al., 2012: 223). In another case, Peebles (2013) argues that the end of debtors’ prison was a result of a push, initiated by Christian missionaries, to ‘internally’ colonize historical relics of barbarism (p. 703). It was a process of ‘taming’ uncivilized legacies of the past to pave the way for emerging capitalism.

Finally, in a recent perspective by Roehrkasse (2023), focusing on New York State, the author argues debt imprisonment declined partly due to economic changes and partly because of changes to the political system as, ‘expansions of political rights and democratic culture led to new moral and legal theories that forbade private contracting over one’s person’ (p. 204). To put it simply, with the formation of a liberal democratic state the power to imprison that had previously been controlled by ‘private actors’ was taken over by ‘state actors’. Capitalist markets were ‘necessary’ but not ‘sufficient’. It was the formation of a democratic state that was key (Roehrkasse, 2023: 206). The personal violence of creditors to imprison debtors was seen as a threat to the ‘emerging democratic social order’ (Roehrkasse, 2023: 206).¹

Conceptually, this paper draws from the legacy of historical materialism. Thompson (1995) once argued that while Marx attempted to break the idealistic structure of bourgeois political economy, at times, he became trapped in an alternative economism (pp. 81–83). This, unsurprisingly, has been a source of large debate (Anderson, 1980). Regarding the penitentiary specifically, though, I suggest Thompson’s claim can be extended to make an important point. On one hand, throughout Marx’s work he mentioned various ways the dispossessed proletariat became criminalized, and wrote commentaries supporting many leftist political prisoners. On the other hand, he wrote that while the history of ‘primitive accumulation’ was one of force and violence, eventually capitalism became organized around the ‘silent’ or ‘dull’ compulsion of economic relations whereby, ‘direct extra-economic force is still of course used, but only in exceptional cases’ (Marx, 1990: 899). At the same time, he notes, for instance, that master–servant laws remained in place at the time of writing, and workers who broke them were considered engaging in ‘criminal action’ (Marx, 1990: 903). Here, I suggest, there is an unresolved tension in Marx’s analysis between a theoretical perspective emphasizing the impersonal economic forces behind capitalist compulsion and the non-exceptional history of force, violence, criminalization, and imprisonment in the history of capitalism.

The legacy of this has been, at times, a missing link in some historical materialist inspired writings on the history of, or transition to, capitalism. Much of this literature has ignored the prison. In doing so, I argue it assumes an economism wherein, in fact, the role of force, violence, and discipline in creating capitalist relations of production is underestimated. For instance, in the most recent substantial global overview of these discussions, prisons do not appear to have a significant role in the history of capitalism (Lafrance and Post, 2019). Similarly, discussions over the transition to capitalism in US history have focused on labor and class, but generally excluded discussions of the penitentiary (Parisot, 2019: 203–204). But to further develop the critique of capitalism, one angle that can be explored more is the role of prisons and unfreedom in the rise of capitalism. The decline of debt imprisonment in the 19th century is one entry point for this.

There are several major exceptions that do focus on imprisonment, though, although they do not substantially discuss debt imprisonment in the United States. The first systematic analysis of the history of punishment and capitalism from a Marxist perspective is Rusche and Kirchheimer’s 1939 book Punishment and Social Structure, which still provides a key starting point. They write, ‘every system of production tends to discover punishments which correspond to its productive relationships’ (Rusche and Kirchheimer, 2017: 5). ‘Discover’ is the key word here.² The history of the prison system in the United States and elsewhere, during the rise of capitalism, was one of experimentation in which new methods were tried, all based around a general attempt by states to create economically efficient, rational systems of punishment that would fit into capitalist society, be fiscally effective, and not overburden state spending.

The second most substantial major study of the prison in the transition to capitalism remains Melossi and Pavarini’s (2018) classic book The Prison and the Factory, first published in Italy in the late 1970s. The authors try to trace how the rise of capitalism as a mode of production transformed the prison system. Going back to the history of the workhouse in capitalist zones of Europe, linking it with the story of ‘primitive accumulation’, the authors show that penal control, and control and regulation of the working class, formed side-by-side. In other words, the workhouse and prison have historically been mechanisms for controlling and disciplining the proletariat. While goods were produced in prison, and profits were made by contractors, this was in some respects secondary to the overall goal of creating resocialized proletarian subjects that would accept the discipline of capitalist market relations (Melossi and Pavarini, 2018: 181, 185–186). Also, it should be mentioned that neither of these two classic works adequately acknowledge the extent to which the penitentiary arose as part of the racial state.

Also, it is important to note that Foucault’s Discipline & Punish draws inspiration from Rusche and Kirchheimer. But for all the steps forward his analysis takes, it also takes a step back. Citing Rusche and Kirchheimer he notes, ‘different systems of punishment’ correlate with ‘systems of production’ (Foucault, 1995: 24). But Foucault’s account, which does not analyze debt imprisonment, provides a theory of a possible history, more than a historical analysis itself. Modes of production and class transformations do occasionally bounce through his text, but he does not provide a substantial analysis of the ways that prisons and disciplinary society more generally emerged concretely from transformations in social relations and modes of production. His ‘genealogical’ approach, while providing countless insights, and occasionally, sporadically citing Marx, does not explain history, although it does provide a conceptual path to rethink historical explanation.

Since Rusche and Kirchheimer, a vast amount of critical writing on crime, punishment, and capitalism, from Marxist criminology to critical carceral studies, has developed (Adamson, 1984; Bonnet, 2019; Brown and Schept, 2017; Camp, 2016; Cowling, 2011; Davis, 2003; Gilmore, 2007; Gordon, 1973; Greenberg, 1993; Grose and Groves, 1988; Hall et al., 1982; Hobsbawm, 2000; Jay, 2019; Linebaugh, 2006; O’Malley, 1987; Russell, 2002; Tetrault, 2023; Thompson, 2013; Vegh Weis, 2017; Vogel, 2003; Wang, 2018). It is outside the scope of this paper to engage with this literature, nor does it aim to directly contribute to it, although it may indirectly, as these studies do not systematically engage with the decline of 19th-century debt imprisonment. Rather, it is primarily a contribution to debates over the role of force, violence, and prisons in the history of, and transition to, capitalism.

Imprisonment for debt

For centuries in Europe, debt imprisonment was a norm. More broadly, the birth of prisons followed, in many ways, the rise and spread of capitalist relations throughout Europe. Especially from the end of the 16th century onward, prisons and workhouses began to form in places such as Amsterdam, then Hanseatic cities like Bremen and Hamburg, spreading to Denmark and Sweden (Spierenburg, 2007: 24). It was a slow and uneven process as medieval forms of punishment lingered, the emergence of new ones took centuries, and lines between medieval and modern types of punishment were not always clearly delineated.

The development of capitalism and prisons was a global process, as was the rise of the idea that debt imprisonment was unjust. For instance, in England, by 1725, the Act to Prevent Frivolous and Vexatious Arrests placed limits on mesne imprisonment for £10 or £2 depending on if it was in a superior court or another court (Wakelam, 2021: 190). By the late 18th century, debates had developed over how to manage the issue of debtors and creditors and some advocated for the end of debt imprisonment (Considerations on the Laws, 1779; Farley, 1795).

The American practice of imprisoning debtors generally followed the English model. For instance, American law allowed for the mesne system in which creditors could have debtors arrested and put in jail before their case was ruled on and could sometimes keep them in prison until they paid back what they owed. In these cases, the debtor–creditor relation was a personalized relation in which the creditor could enact private vengeance, using state power for this purpose. Opposition to debtors’ prison would also follow a somewhat similar timeline, with criticism of debtors’ prisons first appearing in the colonies in the 1750s (Monea, 2022: 6–8). Generally, too, the development of modern penitentiaries was an international process. To take one example, in 1846 a congress was held in Frankfurt, Germany with 75 people; 46 were German, others came from England, France, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, and the United States (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855c: 108).

Jails were usually terrible places where debtors, imprisoned for owing very small amounts of money, were treated as harshly as any other criminalized person. Eventually, after opposition to placing debtors alongside other criminals developed, sometimes they were separated into different spaces, and eventually some jails that emphasized housing debtors formed. In some cases, also, debtors would be given the ‘liberty of the yard’ whereby they could leave prison within a specified distance during the day, to return in the evening (Feer, 1961: 260–261). But most debtors were crowded into tightly filled rooms in local jails, mixed with every other type of imprisoned person. Poor conditions could mean cold, starvation, and sickness. Their situation was often unique compared with other prisoners because they were forced to pay for imprisonment costs, including food, clothing, and fuel for warmth (Mann, 2002: 87). The goal of imprisoning debtors was to influence them to reveal wealth they had potentially been hiding. It might also influence other family members to pay off their debts. However, often, debtors were stuck in prison, unable to pay back their debts because they did not have hidden savings, nor could they usually obtain money through work while locked up (Mann, 2002: 79–80).

Still, the United States was a leader of prison reform. Experiments with somewhat less medieval, more lenient systems of punishment go back to the Pennsylvania colony as early as the 1680s. In the colony, punishment laws were enacted reserving the death penalty only for first-degree murder, and hard labor in houses of correction for other crimes. In 1718, this was replaced with harsher laws following the English model, though (Lewis, 1965: 2). It was not until after the American Revolution that prison reforms began on a larger scale. The Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia was the first in what would become many decades of exploration with new systems of punishment that would adhere with the structure of a gradually and unevenly developing capitalist social order. And in 1787, The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons was created as a broader reform movement to create more ‘humane’ forms of punishment began (Lewis, 1965: 2–3; Rubin, 2021: 8–14). This movement was driven by a variety of social groups. As one author notes of the society:

Of the first 175 members, 87 were merchants or professionals, 15 were clergy, 19 were probably artisans, 8 were governmental officials, 6 were gentlemen, and the occupations of 30 were of uncertain status. The membership of the Society embodied the commercial, professional, and religious alliance that pushed for the new system of punishment. (Meranze, 1996: 143)

Decades later, by the 1830s, the reform movement was in full force, albeit with a long way to go. This was represented in Beaumont and De Tocqueville’s book published in the United States in 1833 (Beaumont and De Tocqueville, 1833).³ Investigating innovations in the American penitentiary system to see what the French might learn, their book provides an overview of a penitentiary system and country between modes of punishment. On one hand, remnants of older systems of jail remained in place. On the other, new penitentiaries, based around new philosophies of discipline and reintegration into society, were being created and gradually and unevenly spreading across the country.

The authors discuss that while nine states began to develop new penitentiaries, 15 had yet to change and held onto ‘the ancient system’ (Beaumont and De Tocqueville, 1833: 12). In the old system, as they describe, prisoners were crowded into jails and often mixed regardless of age, gender, mental health status, or the severity of their crime. In these chaotic, unhealthy, immoral jails with little to no discipline, debtors were treated as criminals. By this time, the distinction between criminals and debtors had grown. In other words, as an increasingly capitalist conception of criminality formed, alongside a universalized system of crime and punishment, the idea that debtors who did not commit fraud should be treated as criminals began to be seen as a barbarous relic of an earlier age.

For instance, by 1820, a newspaper was printed in New York titled The Remembrancer, or Debtors Prison Recorder. It was created to operate alongside the Humane Society of the City of New York, which profits from the newspaper would go toward. The Humane Society was one of several influential reform societies that formed throughout the country. In the short run, it supported imprisoned debtors with items such as food and clothes. In the long run, it worked to alter public perceptions and state policy. Its original name was Society for the Relief of Distressed Debtors, and it was created in 1787 as the post-Revolutionary era created space for the new country to break from British criminal laws and policies (Humane Society of the City of New York, 1814).

The Remembrancer was created, ‘to spread before an enlightened public the deplorable effects resulting from the barbarous practice of imprisonment for debt’ (The Remembrancer, 1820a: 1). Debt imprisonment was, from this perspective, a ‘vestage of feudal tyranny’ and a contradiction to American ideals of freedom (The Remembrancer, 1820a: 1). To solve the problem, the newspaper advocated for bankruptcy laws and a legal procedure with juries to sort unfortunate debtors from fraudulent criminals. Among other angles explored, the paper supported an economic case for elimination of imprisonment for the ‘honest debtor’. It printed that it would benefit, ‘the merchant, mechanic and farmer; they would be cautious to whom they gave credit, and it would tend, in a very great degree, to relieve the country from that system of crediting, which at present would embarrass it’ (The Remembrancer, 1820b: 1).

Generally, it was not unusual, as mentioned in an article titled ‘Extract of a Letter to the Editor of the Albany Register’, to argue that it was unjust to imprison a debtor who had not been proven to be a criminal, ‘when charged with no other sin but that of being poor’ (The Remembrancer, 1820a: 11). Simply being from the lower class should not be a crime. But it was not always the poor who were imprisoned for debt. The newspaper did address that anyone, not just the poor, could be a victim of misfortune and debt. Even the wealthy, in some circumstances, might find themselves imprisoned for debt. In addition, it was often suggested that debt imprisonment ruined the family (The Remembrancer, 1820a: 13–14). When a patriarch was locked up, he could not work and earn money. And if he could not earn money, and his family was dependent upon him, his wife and children would starve (The Remembrancer, 1820c: 21).

Of course, it would be naïve to claim new forms of punishment were simply ‘caused’ by the functions or needs of a rising capitalist system. Many other factors were involved. For instance, there were religiously inspired humanitarian reformers like the Quaker Thomas Eddy who believed that deviants could be reformed and need not simply be punished with violence and humiliation (Lewis, 1965: 3–4). From another angle, the development of the US prison system was an experiment in the limits of controlling insanity. It was found, for instance, that prisons primarily based upon total solitary incarceration could more often lead to either insanity or suicide than those with some degree of highly circumscribed social activity. The influential Boston Prison Discipline Society, for instance, advocated for prisoners to engage in hard labor alongside each other silently during the day and solitary confinement at night as a solution to this (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855a: 38–43). While some prisoners did stay healthy under total solitary confinement, others could become insane or violent, and it did not seem to successfully reform them.

Experiments in prison reform

As reformers experimented with different forms of penitentiaries, the debate eventually codified around two competing systems: the Pennsylvania and Auburn systems (A Massachusetts Man, 1836; Friedman, 1993; Meskell, 1999). In the former, prisoners were completely isolated, although given space to labor. In the latter, prisoners were isolated in cells at night, but worked in a shared space. This modicum of social activity, in which they were not allowed to interact but, at least, could sense each other, seemed to fare better for their mental health.

As Foucault notes, the Pennsylvania system was not entirely original. In some ways, it was influenced by earlier models of prisons in places such as Ghent and Gloucester (Foucault, 1995: 124). American reformers were also aware of this. In a defense of the Pennsylvania system, for instance, George W. Smith wrote, ‘the introduction of labor as an essential element of a general system of prison discipline, may perhaps be justly attributed to that spirit of economy which characterizes the legislation of the Dutch’ (Smith, 1833: 6). The author speculates that perhaps William Penn drew lessons from traveling in Holland when he established the Pennsylvania colony in the late 1600s, using labor in punishment. He also mentions that the Auburn system was not original but, ‘it is a mere servile copy of the prison at Ghent’ (Smith, 1833: 9, 24–25). For Foucault, rather than serving as a public space in which social revenge could be taken against criminals, they would be hidden away, under the supervision of prison workers, and the goal of the prison was to reform both the physical habits of the criminal, along with remaking their mind. He also discusses the Auburn system which was designed as, ‘microcosm of a perfect society in which individuals are isolated in their moral existence, but in which they come together in a strict hierarchical framework, with no lateral relation, communication being possible in a vertical direction’ (Foucault, 1995: 238).

The success of penitentiaries, and especially the Auburn system which gradually spread throughout the country, was also partly due to its financial capacity. Although the purpose of the penitentiary cannot be reduced to profit generation – it was about creating new types of disciplined, market-oriented subjects, even if in many cases states had to pay some of the costs of this – the link between private contractors and prisons which formed was beneficial for both. In this way, capitalist class activity functioned as a type of overdetermining force, where a fit formed between the pursuit of profit and desire of the state for social discipline, which was expressed in penitentiaries, especially in the Auburn system. As McLennan analyzes:

a handful of private manufactures brought machinery and materials into the prison, paid a fixed, daily rate for the labor of prisoners (or, sometimes, a piece rate), and began production. Before long, Auburn was a humming factory producing thousands of tools, rifles, shoes, clothing, combs, furniture, and barrels. (McLennan, 2008: 60)

Prisoners served as wage laborers for private contractors, who could sell their goods on the market, although the specific ways this was organized varied between prisons. In some cases, prisoners might work directly for the state that sold commodities, and prisoners could be used as state workers to, for instance, build more prisons. The pursuit of profit and institutional shape of prisons thus co-formed each other. The relatively autonomous ‘institutional materiality’ of the penal arm of the state was shaped by the power of capital, albeit far from reducible to it (Poulantzas, 2000).

Overall, a new attitude toward debtors was part of a broader shift toward a more disciplinary society, although the process was perhaps slower and more uneven than Foucault realized. The author famously discussed the transition from punishing the body to reforming the soul, which was reflected in prison reform discourse. Defending solitary confinement, for instance, the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons printed, ‘from the Scriptures and the visits of the ministers of our Holy Religion, he will be taught the value of his immortal soul, and to prepare for the judgement to come’ (Annual Report of the Acting Committee, 1833: 9). Isolation would give inmates space to reflect on their behavior while labor would teach them new habits of work and discipline.

Even as new penitentiaries formed, and the Auburn system spread, older forms of punishment and local jails persisted. In the 1830s and 1840s, as penitentiaries rose, they remained limited, in many respects, compared with local city and county jails across the country. This is shown in the detailed reports of the Boston Prison Discipline Society. Written yearly from 1826 to 1854, these reports analyzed the changing and growing US penitentiary system and suggested ways to reform it to make it more humane. The first report found murderers, those yet to be proclaimed guilty, and even those imprisoned for debt, were often in the same prisons, treated the same ways (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855a: 12). It advocated, among other things, separating white and Black prisoners, separating the imprisoned based upon different classifications or classes of criminality, separating men and women, and pushed for better sanitary conditions. Prisons would remain as houses of calculated torture as, for instance, whipping and physical punishment remained used, even at the most recent penitentiaries built. The question for reformers was what degree of torture and violence would be socially acceptable and psychologically effective. The goal, overall, was to figure out how to create a system of punishment that fit with republican principles (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855b: 83).

Generally, too, penitentiaries were racialized from the start. The first report notes that in Massachusetts there were 314 convicts in penitentiaries and 50 of them were ‘colored’. While 1/74th of people were ‘colored’ in the state, 1 out of every 6 prisoners was. And in Connecticut, while 1/34th of the population was Black, 1/3rd of prisoners were. In Vermont the ratio was 1/35th to 1/4th. In New Jersey it was 1/13th to 1/3rd (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855a: 23-24). The report continued to suggest that the issue was a failure to ‘raise the character of the colored population’ (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855a: 24). Years later, these proportions would often remain the same. For instance, the 1847 report shows that in the state prison in Wethersfield, Connecticut from the late 1820s through the early 1840s, the ratio of ‘colored’ prisoners went from 1/3rd to 1/4th, while this group went from 1/34th of the population to 1/38th (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855c: 15).

This was also gendered, as, for instance, the Philadelphia Society notes that in 1832 in Walnut Street Prison, to take one case, there were 18 white women and 65 ‘coloured’ women in the prison, alongside 241 white men and 171 ‘coloured’ men (Annual Report of the Acting Committee, 1833: 15). Similar proportions were reflected in other prisons. Since one role of the penitentiary system was to regulate the emerging dispossessed racialized proletariat, these numbers reflected the way the prison system was shaped to control the criminalized Black proletariat from the start. That being said, reform societies did not seem to view Black criminality as caused by, say, the scientific racial nature of the population, as perhaps even more racist theories would. Instead, their condescending racism blamed ignorance and the failure of northern states to provide proper education, including religious education, that would teach better behavior (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855: 97).

Another aspect of this emerging system was the increasing predominance of criminal activity, reflective of the struggles of a dispossessed proletariat class in a monetarized economy. The Boston Prison Discipline Society, for instance, noted that counterfeiting was a relatively common crime, and ‘gangs of counterfeiters’ existed, some of whom negatively influenced younger prisoners to learn their ways (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855b: 61). In some cases, equipment to counterfeit such as copperplates, steel and iron presses, and molds to counterfeit coin, were discovered, as it, generally, became a relatively common crime throughout the market economy. Other skills including picking pockets and locks could also be taught in penitentiaries where criminals were enclosed together with the ability to communicate, and even commit the supposedly ‘unnatural crime’ of sodomy (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855b: 62–63, 72). In general, many of the crimes people were placed in prison for were crimes against property, although there were many others, of course, from adultery to murder.

Central to the penitentiary reform movement was the question of labor. There were several elements to this. If prisoners were kept laboring, they would not engage in mischievous behavior with each other, would learn new skills and discipline they could use after they left prison, and penitentiaries could become economically self-supporting, although the latter did not happen in every case. When Beaumont and De Tocqueville, for instance, discussed differences between the Philadelphia/Pennsylvania and Auburn systems, they noted that critics of the former claimed it was inferior because prisoners labored in solitary, and thus were more restricted in their production to individually producible products like weaving, tailoring, and shoemaking. The authors, though, did not see this as a problem, and thought it occupied them ‘usefully’ (Beaumont and De Tocqueville, 1833: 34).

In general, regardless, agreements between prison authorities and private contractors shaped many aspects of the prison. Contractors, for instance, profited by supplying food to prisons. And they profited from the use of prison labor itself. The authors also compared the use of contractors in Europe in contrast to the United States. In Europe, too often, the contractor, ‘sees nothing but a money affair’ (Beaumont and De Tocqueville, 1833: 35). Here, they are motivated to maximize profit, which can come at the expense of prison order and wellbeing. In the United States, though, they see a better balance has been struck between the private pursuit of profit and the state. For instance, ‘at Auburn, Sing-Sing, and Boston, the prisoners are fed by contract, but this contract is not allowed to be made for more than one year’ (Beaumont and De Tocqueville, 1833: 35). In other cases, such as at Wethersfield, prisons managed food themselves. They additionally note that at the Auburn prison, different contractors were hired to supply food, and to use the labor of prisoners (Beaumont and De Tocqueville, 1833: 35). To put it differently, prison managers channeled capitalist interests in a way that limited the power of contractors to exploit prisons and prison labor beyond certain politically controlled limits. Prisons were also able to draw from their own pool of workers to expand with, for instance, 100 prisoners from Auburn constructing the Sing-Sing prison (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855b: 114). Also, while there was a general tendency to try and make the penitentiary financially self-supporting, as well as resocialize inmates to acclimate to market relations, strategies for this differed in various cases. For instance, as McLennan points out, while the Auburn system focused on forcing prisoners to work, habituating them through required labor, in the Pennsylvania, this differed. Instead, ‘labor was not to be directly coerced; rather the tedium of perpetual isolation would lead the prisoner both to take up the labor of his or her own accord, and to recognize its spiritual and material virtues’ (McLennan, 2008: 62).

As the penitentiary system expanded, debtors were increasingly seen as deserving to be outside of it. In some cases, prisons would build separate sections for debtors and witnesses and those yet to be tried and convicted, or debtors would be held in separate parts of prisons, even in smaller local jails (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855c: 9, 23, 266, 321). This went alongside the conjunctural process whereby social attitudes toward debtors and prisons transformed, which was also reflected in a long history of new laws passed to gradually replace debt prison with bankruptcy laws (Coleman, 1999).

Class transformation

Key to these changes was a transformation in the shape of American capitalism. This has been left out of the history of some interpretation. For instance, one recent, relatively thorough book on history of the rise of the penitentiary in the United States suggests that the penitentiary arose in a context of social change in Jacksonian America as ‘social elites’ orchestrated the process of reform, driven by anxieties about fear of social disorder (Goodman et al., 2017: 27–28). Yet capitalism is only mentioned twice, and one of these references is a footnote citing Rusche and Kirchheimer (Goodman et al., 2017: 46, 151). But the political changes the authors discuss occurred within the context of shifting dynamics in the mode of production. Still, the history of the white-setter colony turned United States was never strictly one of capitalism or non-capitalism. From the first settler colonies through the early 1800s, more capitalistic relations existed alongside less capitalistic ones. It was always a matter of degrees of penetration of the force of capital accumulation into social life (Parisot, 2019). This makes locating any key single moment in a ‘transition’ to capitalism difficult to precisely determine.

Still, the long-1830s, it might be called, was a key moment in the long consolidation of capitalism in the United States. The rise of new forms of social punishment reflected this. But this was not the result of the informal power of the market. The question of structure and agency, or what Sartre called the ‘practico-inert’ and human action, is a significant one, here, because capitalists do act as ‘capital personified’ but capital also acts a social force beyond individuals (Marx, 1990; Sartre, 2004). Agency and power are central. Focusing too much on the ‘market revolution’, or the economic compulsion of capitalist power, risks neglecting the centrality of force, policing, criminality, and prison discipline in the history of capitalism.

Aspects of this class transformation were elaborated on in older discussions over both the ‘transition’ to capitalism and in ‘new’ labor history, although neither of these literatures tended to centralize the role of the penitentiary (Parisot, 2019). Although perhaps overestimating the subsistence nature of family farmers, to some extent, and underestimating the long durée time scale over which American capitalism took root, Sellers’ classic book synthesized insights from these literatures and summarizes the historical process well. In the north, in the early 1800s, the dominant modes of production prevailing in the country began to change. While many patriarchal small land-owning farm families previously produced partly for subsistence, partly for the market, this mode of life became increasingly difficult to maintain due to demographic shifts and lack of access to land, especially as Western land was controlled by speculators and capital, creating pressure for younger generations to find new means of social reproduction. Meanwhile, as cities grew, artisans began to produce less for ‘competency’ and independence, and more to survive in a rising capitalist economy as the artisan–journeyman system began to gradually be replaced with something resembling a capitalist/wage–labor relation (Sellers, 1991).

New intermediary forms of production, such as the putting out system, emerged, bringing the population more deeply into market relations. This was buttressed by industrialization as the first American factories were created, often using the labor of women and children. In addition, merchant-capitalists who engaged in diverse capitalistic activities were gradually replaced by more specialized capitalists. It was the merchant-capitalist class as well, in the push to commodify the land and turn everything into a potential profitable opportunity, that drove the rise of American capitalism (Sellers, 1991).

Sellers (1991) does mention, in passing, this may have gone along with an increase in debt imprisonment as, ‘in 1809 over a thousand men were incarcerated for debt in New York City alone, half for owing less than ten dollars, a week’s wages’ (p. 25). In fact, this was only the tip of the iceberg. The Boston Prison Discipline Society estimated in their 1829 report that as many as 75,000 people may have been imprisoned for debt annually (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855a: 252). Next year they reported:

As nearly as we can ascertain from the returns which we have received, the number of imprisoned for debt annually is, in Massachusetts, 3000; in New York, 10,000; in Pennsylvania, 7,000; in Maryland, 3000; and in other Northern and Middles States, nearly as above in proportion to the population. (Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, 1855a: 368)

Regardless of the exact numbers, it is likely the case that as a dispossessed proletariat grew, so did the number of people imprisoned for debt each year, given it was primarily the poor who lacked the means to pay their debts back, albeit with occasional exceptions as capitalists made failed investments based on loans. And repeatedly, records show that debt imprisonment was an unjust punishment primarily applied to, ‘the laboring class of our population’ (Extract of a Letter, 1830: 388).

Class transformation at two levels increased debt imprisonment as a social problem and created a framework for the population to develop new attitudes to solve this problem. From below, a struggling working class found itself increasingly indebted, often with small amounts of debt, as market uncertainty played an increasing role shaping the vicissitudes of social life. From above, the development of a capitalist class, dependent upon debt and investment for their profits, created a push to change the legal system toward a universal system in which calculated risk for investment was not something that should be punished, but was a normal, regulated part of life. The role of the state, in this case, would be to smooth the bumps capitalist investment and market variability created.

These developments were reflected in discourse about prison reform. From below, as a generalized proletariat, who were sometimes indebted, took root, it made decreasing sense to punish this population for their poverty, and more to develop techniques to teach them capitalist work discipline and recycle them into the workforce. And from above – as one function of the state in capitalist society tends to be to attempt to stabilize investment and secure capitalist stability – bankruptcy laws began to replace debt imprisonment. In other words, it was not the rise of informal market relations in themselves, but the assertion of the power of the capitalist elite over an exploited class, and the creation of a state supporting conditions for capitalist social reproduction, that set the structural basis for new forms of experimentation with penitentiary systems.

In a capitalist mode of production with a liberal–republican state form, debt imprisonment began to be seen as economically irrational and inefficient. As one commentor put it in 1830:

it appears that in the city of New York, in the year 1829, there were 1085 persons imprisoned for debts to the amount of $25,409, of which there was paid in jail only $295—being less than one eightieth part of the debts. (Casey, 1830)

Meanwhile:

that costs by this system are accumulated to an enormous amount; those attending the suits, for the above debts, having been no less than $362,076, or fourteen times the amount of the debts – and above one thousand times the amount of the sums recovered. (Casey, 1830)

As another commentor explained in 1854, if the goal of debt imprisonment was to encourage debtors to reveal hidden assets, it failed. A ‘rogue’ would not reveal these, regardless of how soft or harsh the laws were. Instead, the laws punished the poor, and those who may have needed to go into small amounts of debt to secure their subsistence. There was also a class bias: ‘no one thinks of imprisoning a member of good society, who has the address to get credited for $500 or $100,000’ (Van Vleet, 1854). While only a small amount of money was recovered by creditors via imprisonment methods, many poor debtors were punished. This was bad for the economy, for instance, since there were many imprisoned mariners, while the economy of Boston needed more sea workers (Van Vleet, 1854).

In addition, as American society was supposedly built on equality and independence, whereby debtors and creditors should be given the same rights, the author cites Chief Justice Marshall who declared, ‘imprisonment constitutes no part of the contract’ (Van Vleet, 1853). There should, of course, be laws in place to enforce economic contracts, but to imprison someone for debt, especially a small amount, the author believed, should be outside the realm of the social contract, and was, ‘dark, designing, dishonorable in the extreme, and utterly unworthy of the sanction of law’ (Van Vleet, 1853). This old form of punishment for debt, in other words, was a personal form of power that should be left out of the new capitalistic, market-based legal system of individual equality. Overall, economically, some argued, imprisoning debtors harmed the commercial economy. One suggested:

The inevitable consequences is, a diminution of the quantity of labor, industry and economy; an accumulation of unnecessary cost; and an increase of poor and idle persons, who must, ultimately, be supported at the public expense. (Extract of the Message, 1830: 393)

Mann (2002) has called this, ‘the redefinition of debt from moral delict to economic risk’ (p. 82). Calls for reform of debt imprisonment came from debtors who were also entrepreneurs. Often those engaged in mercantile activities and the world of business, who would go in debt in their business, wanted to reform the system. Since debt was necessary to conduct capitalist investment, it was not logical to keep debt imprisonment laws in place for victims of market misfortune. It is not surprising that Congress began to discuss bankruptcy laws toward the end of 1797, in the wake of a speculative financial crisis (Mann, 2002: 102). The state was first beginning to develop policies to manage the instabilities of capitalism, as the capitalist state does tend to have the role of crisis manager (Panitch and Gindin, 2012). Part of this meant indebted capitalists would not be punished with prison, but with a legal order designed to manage failed investments generally, rather than simply punish individuals for moral failure. Debt could also hurt social mobility as The Remembrancer, for instance, published an article which stated it was oppressive and unjust that debtors were treated as criminals. Enterprising people who ‘might adorn the circles of men of business’ were punished (The Remembrancer, 1820b: 10).

These class dynamics are also seen, for instance, in the debate over the 1841 federal bankruptcy law, which would pass, but be repealed 2 years later. For example, the Federal Committee on the Judiciary’s report proposed bankruptcy laws as an alternative to debtors’ prison, and suggested these laws would benefit all social classes, from poor debtors to big merchants. It describes how bankruptcy laws and imprisonment for debt arose in England under Henry VIII based on the idea that if a debtor did not pay back, it was because they were unwilling or deceitful. But in a society with a supposedly more civilized business community, the legal system for credit and debt needed to change. For the Judiciary Committee, ‘private property is sacred’ (The Committee on the Judiciary, 1841). The law needed to develop based on this. The Committee also noted that the foundation of the business world was risk. Creditors took on risk when they made loans, and those who took loans usually did so in a way productive to society. In the risky commercial world, contingencies arise, and sometimes people cannot pay back their debts. This should not be punished with violence or prison, but was a regular event in the market economy, which the state needed to regulate.

Bankruptcy laws as a replacement for debtors’ prison would apply to different social classes. Small debtors might declare voluntary bankruptcy. Involuntary bankruptcy would apply to larger capitalists. In both cases, the legal system would help manage the bankruptcy processes. Overall, in an economy in which all social classes tended to go into debt, for the Judiciary Committee, it made sense to form bankruptcy laws to manage risk and loans at all social levels. The report also estimated that 500,000 people in the country were currently insolvent, albeit without strong evidence for this number, and wrote that many of these debtors had contributed to building the country’s wealth. Rather than debtors’ prison, bankruptcy laws would put them back into the ‘field of enterprise’ so they could recontribute to the wealth of the country, as well as take care of their families (The Committee on the Judiciary, 1841). Left out of the proposed bankruptcy policy, though, were corporations, which the Committee decided should be managed by states.

The political debate over the bankruptcy law showed that while it was generally a consensus among politicians that imprisoning debtors was immoral, and went against the spirit of the emerging capitalist order, how to manage insolvent debtors in the wake of their inability to pay without imprisoning them remained a large question. All sides, whether opposed to the bill, for the bill, or in-between, debated it in terms of the end of debtors’ prison, though. For instance, Senator Robert J. Walker argued he had supported such a bill since the 1837 economic crisis, and it should apply to banks and every class, although if banks were left out, he would still support it, and hope for a supplemental bill to include banks. He continued:

In vain will you have abolished imprisonment for debt, unless this bill becomes a law. The creditor will still be the jailer, and the debtor his captive. You will but have enlarged the bounds of his prison. The chains will still be around him; they will be around his business, and around his soul; they will be around the bread that he eats, and the bed upon which he reposes; they will be around all the energies of his body and his mind, and upon the necks of his wife and children. (Walker, 1841: 182)

Whether merchant, mechanic, farmer, or planter, the debtor would have no option beyond becoming ‘an exile or a slave’ (Walker, 1841: 182). Even while not in prison, without bankruptcy laws, debt would still serve as a type of jail. William P. Fessenden, House Member, also made a spirited defense of the law. While the honest debtor might do their best to pay, unable to ‘perhaps, at last, he is thrown into prison’ (Fessenden, 1841: 471). Bankruptcy laws could replace this.

Not everyone was happy with the proposed policies. New York’s House Representative Samuel Gordon, for one, generally wanted to support a bankruptcy bill, but, as it stood, it exempted banks and corporations. This meant that speculators could take advantage of the bill, engaging in reckless behavior to gain profit, and, if failing, could effectively be bailed out. Also, small debtors would not be able to afford the lawyers and court fees necessary for the process and, ‘it is an insolvent law for the benefit of a favored class of debtors, who have gambled and speculated with thousands upon thousands of dollars, and whose misfortunes were the fruits of their own misconduct’ (Gordon, 1841: 209). House Member John Pope also opposed the bill but also said, ‘imprisonment for debt he had always been opposed to; he considered it as utterly opposed to the genius of our government and the character of our people’ (Pope, 1841: 330).

In this context, although underemphasizing class transformation, Roehrkasse is correct in emphasizing the importance of the particularities of US state formation in the decline of debt imprisonment. In northern states such as New York, debt imprisonment, especially of white men, became morally problematic in contrast to ideals of republican liberty (Roehrkasse, 2023: 212). As one writer discussed:

as the laws of our country now stand, and considering that the whole system of credit is shaped by the legislation, I am not prepared to say that a Christian cannot sleep quietly on the night after he has taken his honest debtor by the throat, and cast him into prison. (Extract of a Letter, 1830: 389)

Some ‘enlightened’ Christians, the author wrote, may sleep well at night after imprisoning a person for debt, but this writer could not. This may also help explain why southern states very gradually followed northern states’ lead in creating penitentiaries. While these states were no less capitalist, slave capitalism was a type of carceral system in itself. If an enslaved person engaged in deviant resistance, it was the master’s role to violently punish them, as opposed to, say placing them in a public jail.

The decline of debt imprisonment was also made possible by changes to the ways credit was organized. Generally, throughout the 19th century, capitalists found new ways to manage risk and make it profitable (Levy, 2012). One aspect of this was creditors developing more efficient ways to reduce risk and make profit through loans without imprisoning debtors, such as requiring co-signers for a loan, or having a debtor put up collateral before signing (Baker et al., 2012: 223).

It was, in other words, the way class forces organized politically, from reform societies, through state politics, set in the context of developing capitalist class relations, that caused debt imprisonment to decline. The combination of capitalist class relations, alongside a state form that began to develop to manage the historically contingent contradictions prevalent in an increasingly capitalist society, created new conditions for the invention of new modes of punishment and discipline generally, and part of this entailed the elimination of older forms of debt imprisonment.

Conclusion

This paper has shown that there is no internal or necessary relationship between capitalism and techniques of imprisonment and punishment. Rather, they historically formed through trial and error as state authorities worked with private contractors in shaping economically efficient disciplinary systems to attempt to reform deviant subjects. Recent research has shown, for instance, relations between labor, punishment, and capitalism continue to change. Reich, for example, has demonstrated that while prison labor might have declined in recent decades, the option to work while in prison is still presented as a ‘choice’ for prisoners to express and distinguish themselves (Reich, 2024: 127). Specifically, this paper focused on the issue of debt imprisonment, and the development of resistance to it in the context of the rise of capitalism. Emphasized here is not the abstract market but the real, concrete class relationships and power relations through which market relations were constituted. As capitalist class relations deepened, new material conditions were created that led to the decline of imprisonment for debt.

Debt imprisonment never entirely ended, though. For instance, one recent study suggests that from 2005 to 2018, as many as 38,000 people in Texas, and 8000 people in Wisconsin, were put in jail for debt, even if sometimes for only a day, and common reasons for this included failing to pay for traffic offenses (Gaebler et al., 2023). Recently, also, commentators have written on the ways that forms of debt are still used to lock people up in what has been called the debt-criminal justice complex (Wamsley, 2019). Generally, fees exist at many levels of the court system, which can be used to criminalize and imprison those who fail to pay them in what seem to be ‘modern-day debtors’ prisons’ (Sobol, 2016). And while, in these ways, imprisonment for debt remains, states also continue to seek rents from the imprisoned to offset the costs of their imprisonment with ‘pay-to-stay’ regulations (Friedman, 2021; Friedman et al., 2021; Kirk et al., 2020). States such as Illinois, for example, will charge fees to the imprisoned and, in some cases, later sue them to regain this money. Yet, unsurprisingly, those who have been convinced often lack the means to obtain this money. Debt remains a chain around the formally incarcerated, even after leaving prison. And justifications claim this not only cheapens the cost for the public by charging prisoners rather than using tax dollars, but teaches the imprisoned ‘financial responsibility’ (Fernandes et al., 2022: 92). In this way, the prison still functions to produce subjects accepting of work habits and social discipline fitting to capitalist society.

It is also important to mention that methods of punishment have been highly diverse throughout the history of American capitalism, and the story presented here is partial. For context, while in colonial American history in some cases criminals were forced to become servants, and in early American history children taken into houses of refuge were lent out as apprentices, their labor used to make profits by those who controlled the means of production, the convict lease system, famously, developed in the south. This, of course, followed the slave south’s older system of so-called justice that meant, as one commentor puts it well, ‘enslaved defendants confronted a justice system that was less an alternative to plantation justice than an extension of the slaveholders’ power cloaked in legal garb’ (Campbell, 2012: 39). Convict leasing was only one mechanism of penal punishment that developed in the south, although leasing convicts to private companies to, for instance, mine coal and iron, proved highly profitable for capital (Campbell, 2012: 90–93). It was also not specific to the postbellum period, as, for instance, in the mid-1820s prisoners were leased from the Kentucky Penitentiary to work in textiles (Ralph, 2023). Meanwhile, prisoners still work in prisons today and are paid extremely low wages with little to no labor protections (ACLU, 2022; Gibson-Light, 2022; Goodman, 2014).

In summary, particular forms of capitalism that have historically existed have tended to create social space for the invention of various mechanisms of penal control. Just as capitalism has historically exploited many diverse racialized and gendered labor forms, penal systems have been developed that synchronize with these forms in historically specific ways that defy easy determinist or functionalist generalizations. The decline of older forms of debt imprisonment was a historically contingent process through which capitalist relations of production created space for the invention of new modes of historically specific punishment.

Finally, the argument presented here suggests that for all the potential shortcomings of their perspectives, such as a lack of analysis of race or gender, classic Marxist works that situate the history of the prison in the history of modes of production still have much to offer and can provide a foundation for future studies in ways that are too often either overlooked or quickly glossed over. At the same time, scholars working on the history of capitalism might reframe their analysis away from the market, or even class alone, to focus on the historical ways that the disciplinary arm of the state played a central role in the history of capitalism. In so doing, capitalism must be reconceptualized not as a system of markets, but a flexible mode of social life that has always historically been built around coercion, force, and violence, of course through histories of colonization and empire, but also through the ways that violence and punishment were utilized to create working classes habituated to capitalist power.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Evan Taparata and Jeff Broxmeyer for providing critical feedback on drafts of this paper, and Amie Bostic for inviting him to present an early version of this paper at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley Department of Sociology Speaker Series.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

James Parisot

Notes

References

A Massachusetts

Man

(1836) Letters on the Comparative Merits of the Pennsylvania and New York Systems of Penitentiary Discipline. Boston, MA: Perkins & Marvin.

ACLU (2022) Captive labor: exploitation of incarcerated workers. ACLU and the Global Human Rights Clinic, Chicago Law School. Available at: https://www.aclu.org/publications/captive-labor-exploitation-incarcerated-workers (accessed 26 September 2024).

Adamson

(1984) Towards a Marxian penology: captive criminal populations as economic threats and resources. Social Problems 31(4): 435–458.

Anderson

(1980) Arguments within English Marxism. New York: Verso.

Annual Report of the Acting Committee (1833) Annual Report of the Acting Committee of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale.

Baker

Cosgel

Miceli

(2012) Debtors’ prisons in America: an economic analysis. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 84(1): 216–228.

Banaji

(2011) Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation. Chicago, IL: Haymarket.

Beaumont

GDE

De Tocqueville

(1833) On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France; with an Appendix on the Penal Colonies, and Also, Statistical Notes. Philadelphia, PA: Carey, Lea & Blanchard.

Bloomberg

(2002) Foreword. In: Rothman

(ed.) The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic. New York: Aldine De Gruyter, pp.xi–xiii.

10.

Bonnet

(2019) The Upper Limit: How Low-wage Work Defines Punishment and Welfare. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

11.

Brown

Schept

(2017) New abolition, criminology and a critical carceral studies. Punishment & Society 19(4): 440–462.

12.

Camp

(2016) Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

13.

Campbell

(2012) Crime & Punishment in African American History. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

14.

Casey

(1830) To the Honourable the Senate and House of representatives of the States of Pennsylvania. The memorial of the subscribers, citizens of the City and County of Philadelphia, Respectfully sheweth That imprisonment for debt is a discreditable remnant of a barbarous system of ancient times, 12 March, Philadelphia, PA.

15.

Coleman

(1999) Debtors and Creditors in America: Insolvency, Imprisonment for Debt, and Bankruptcy, 1607-1900. Washington, DC: Beard Books.

16.

Colgan

(2018) The excessive fines clause: challenging the modern debtors’ prison. U.C.L.A. Law Review 2: 5–77.

17.

Considerations on the Law (1779) Considerations on the Laws Between Debtors and Creditors; and an Abstract of the Insolvent Acts. With Thoughts on a Bill to Enable Creditors to Recover the Effects of their Debtors, And to Abolish Imprisonment for Debt. London: J. Bew, Pater-noster-row.

18.

Cowling

(2011) Can Marxism make sense of crime? Global Discourse 2(2): 59–74.

19.

Davis

(2003) Are Prisons Obsolete?. New York: Seven Stories Press.

20.

Extract of a Letter (1830) Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, Boston. 1826-1835 (J.T., dated, Boston, 24 April). Vol. (1855). Boston, MA: Press of T.R. Marvin.

21.

Extract of the Message (1830) Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, Boston. 1826-1835 (Harvey M, dated, Concord, 4 June 4). Boston, MA: Press of T.R. Marvin.

22.

Farley

(1795) Imprisonment for Debt, Unconstitutional. London: Printed for the Author.

23.

Feer

(1961) Imprisonment for Debt in Massachusetts before 1800. Mississippi Valley Historical Review 48(2): 252–269.

24.

Fernandes

Friedman

Kirk

(2022) The ‘damaged’ state vs. the ‘willful’ nonpayer: pay-to-stay and the social construction of damage, harm, and moral responsibility in a rent- seeking society. RSF: the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 82–105.

25.

Fessenden

(1841) Speech of Mr. Fessenden of Maine, 11 August. The Congressional Globe, Volume 10: Twenty-seventh Congress, First Session.

26.

Foucault

(1995) Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House.

27.

Friedman

(2021) Unveiling the necrocapitalist dimensions of the shadow carceral state: on pay-to-stay to recoup the cost of incarceration. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 37(1): 66–87.

28.

Friedman

Fernandes

Kirk

(2021) ‘Like if you get a hotel bill’: consumer logic, pay-to-stay, and the production of incarceration as a public commodity. Social Forum 36(4): 735–757.

29.

Friedman

(1993) Crime and Punishment in American History. New York: Basic Books.

30.

Gaebler

Barghouty

Vicol

, et al. (2023) Forgotten but not gone: a multi- state analysis of modern-day debt imprisonment. PLoS ONE 18(9): 1–20.

31.

Gerstenberger

(2022) Market and Violence: The Functioning of Capitalism in History. Boston, MA: Brill.

32.

Gibson-Light

(2022) Orange-collar Labor: Work and Inequality in Prison. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

33.

Gilmore

(2007) Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalization California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

34.

Goldberg

(2002) The Racial State. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc.

35.

Goodman

(2014) Race in California’s prison fire camps for men: prison politics, space, and the racialization of everyday life. American Journal of Sociology 120(2): 352–394.

36.

Goodman

Page

J, M

, et al. (2017) Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.

37.

Gordon

(1973) Capitalism, class, and crime in America. Crime and Delinquency 19(2): 163–186.

38.

Gordon

(1841) Remarks of Mr. Gordon, of New York. The Congressional Globe, Volume 10: Twenty-seventh Congress, First Session.

39.

Greenberg

(1993) Crime and Capitalism: Readings in Marxist Criminology. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

40.

Greene

(1834) The Debtors’ Prison: A Tale of a Revolutionary Soldier. New York: A. Greene.

41.

Grose

Groves

(1988) Crime and human nature: a Marxist perspective. Contemporary Crises 12: 145–171.

42.

Hall

Critcher

Jefferson

, et al. (1982) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, Law and Order. London: The Macmillan Press LTD.

43.

Hobsbawm

(2000) Bandits. New York: The New Press.

44.

Howe

(2007) What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. New York: Oxford University Press.

45.

Humane Society of the City of New York (1814) A Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Humane Society of the City of New York Together with the Act of Incorporation and By-laws. New York: Van Winkle and Wiley.

46.

Jay

(2019) Cages and crises: a Marxist analysis of mass incarceration. Historical Materialism 27(1): 182–223.

47.

Kirk

Fernandes

Friedman

(2020) Who pays for the welfare state? Austerity politics and the origin of pay-to-stay fees as revenue generation. Sociological Perspectives 63(6): 921–938.

48.

Lafrance

Post

(2019) Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

49.

Leonetti

(2023) Pinkerton guards and debtors’ prisons: the historical precursors to the modern practice of restitution exploitation. Harvard Civil Liberties-Civil Rights Law Review 58: 273–310.

50.

Levy

(2012) Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

51.

Levy

(2021) Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States. New York: Random House.

52.

Lewis

(1965) From Newgate to Dannemora: The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York, 1796-1848. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

53.

Linebaugh

(2006) The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Verso.

54.

Linebaugh

Rediker

(2000) The Many-headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

55.

McLennan

(2008) The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941. New York: Cambridge University Press.

56.

McNally

(2020) Blood and Money: War, Slavery, Finance, and Empire. Chicago, IL: Haymarket.

57.

Mann

(2002) Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

58.

Marx

(1990) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy: Volume I. New York: Penguin.

59.

Melossi

Pavarini

(2018) The Prison and the Factory: Origins of the Penitentiary System. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

60.

Meranze

(1996) Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760-1835. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

61.

Meskell

(1999) An American revolution: the history of prisons in the United States from 1777 to 1877. Stanford Law Review 51(4): 839–865.

62.

Monea

(2022) A constitutional history of debtors’ Prison. Drexel Law Review 14(1): 1–67.

63.

O’Malley

(1987) Marxist theory and Marxist criminology. Crime and Social Justice 29: 70–87.

64.

Omi

Winant

(2015) Racial Formation in the United States. New York: Routledge.

65.

Panitch

Gindin

(2012) The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire. New York: Verso.

66.

Parisot

(2019) How America Became Capitalist: Imperial Expansion and the Conquest of the West. London: Pluto Press.

67.

Peebles

(2013) Washing away the sins of debt: the nineteenth-century eradication of the debtors’ prison. Comparative Studies in Society and History 55(3): 701–724.

68.

Phelps

(1860) Newgate of Connecticut: A History of the Prison, Its Insurrections, Massacres, & Imprisonment of the Tories, in the Revolution. Albany NY: J. Munsell.

69.

Pope

(1841) House of Representatives, 12 August, 1841. The Congressional Globe, Volume 10: Twenty-seventh Congress, First Session.

70.

Poulantzas

(2000) State, Power, Socialism. New York: Verso.

71.

Ralph

(2023) Slavery and incarceration in the frontier: the origin of convict leasing. Journal of Cultural Economy 16(3): 337–349.

72.

Reich

(2024) From hard labor to market discipline: the political economy of prison work, 1974-2002. American Sociological Review: 126–158.

73.

Rioux

LeBaron

Verovšek

(2020) Capitalism and unfree labor: a review of Marxist perspectives on modern slavery. Review of International Political Economy 27(3): 709–731.

74.

Reports of the Prison Discipline Society (1855a) Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, Boston. 1826-1835: Volume I. Boston: Press of T.R. Marvin.

75.

Reports of the Prison Discipline Society (1855b) Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, Boston. 1836-1845: Volume II. Boston: Press of T.R. Marvin.

76.

Reports of the Prison Discipline Society (1855c) Reports of the Prison Discipline Society, Boston. 1846-1854: Volume III. Boston: Press of T.R. Marvin.

77.

Roehrkasse

(2023) Market development, state formation, and the historical abolition of the debtors’ prison. Punishment & Society 25(1): 202–222.

78.

Rubin

(2021) The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America’s Modern Penal System, 1829-1913. New York: Cambridge University Press.

79.

Rusche

Kirchheimer

(2017) Punishment and Social Structure. New York: Routledge.

80.

Rush

(1787) An Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments upon Criminals, and upon Society. Philadelphia, PA: Joseph James.

81.

Russell

(2002) The continuing relevance of Marxism to critical criminology. Critical Criminology 11: 113–135.

82.

Sartre

(2004) Critique of Dialectical Reason: Volume One. New York: Verso.

83.

Sellers

(1991) The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America 1815-1846. New York: Oxford University Press.

84.

Smith

(1833) A Defense of the System of Solitary Confinement of Prisoners Adopted by the State of Pennsylvania, with Remarks on the Origin, Progress and Extension of This Species of Prison Discipline. Philadelphia, PA: E.G. Dorsey.

85.

Sobol

(2016) Charging the poor: criminal justice debt & modern-day debtors’ prisons. Maryland Law Review 75(2): 486–540.

86.

Spierenburg

(2007) The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Their Inmates in Early Modern Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

87.

Tetrault

JEC

(2023) Decolonizing prisons: indigenized programming and a critique of critical prison studies. Incarceration 4: 1–22.

88.

The Committee on the Judiciary (1841) Rep. No. 5. Bankruptcy. 27th Congress, 1St Session, Rep. No. 5, House of Representatives, July 21, 1841.

89.

The Remembrancer (1820a) The Remembrancer, or Debtors Prison Recorder, 8 April 1(1). New York: John B. Jansen.

90.

The Remembrancer (1820b) The Remembrancer, or Debtors Prison Recorder, 17 April 1(2). New York: John B. Jansen.

91.

The Remembrancer (1820c) The Remembrancer, or Debtors Prison Recorder, 24 April 1(3). New York: John B. Jansen.

92.

Thompson

(1995) The Poverty of Theory: Or an Orrery of Errors. London: Merlin Press.

93.

Thompson

(2013) Whigs & Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. London: Breviary Stuff Publications.

94.

Van Vleet

JRS

(1853) Imprisonment for debt, a law that defeats itself no. v.. Prisoner’s Friend: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Criminal Reform, Philosophy, Literature, Science and Art, 1 December.

95.

Van Vleet

JRS

(1854) Imprisonment for debt, a law that defeats itself no. viii.. Prisoner’s Friend: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Criminal Reform, Philosophy, Literature, Science and Art, 1 March.

96.

Vegh Weis

(2017) Marxism and Criminology: A History of Criminal Selectivity. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

97.

Vogel

(2003) Capitalism and incarceration revisited. Monthly Review 55(4): 38–55.

98.

Wakelam

(2021) Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-century England: An Economic History of the Debtors’ Prison. New York: Routledge.

99.

Walker

(1841) In Senate. The Congressional Globe, Volume 10: Twenty-seventh Congress, First Session, 12 July.

100.

Wamsley

(2019) Neoliberalism, Mass Incarceration, and the US Debt-Criminal Justice Complex. Critical Social Policy 39(2): 248–267.

101.

Wang

(2018) Carceral Capitalism. South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e).