Goals & History
The correctional goal focusing on removing an offender from society to physically prevent future crimes.
What is Incapacitation?
The facility considered the birthplace of the American Penitentiary System in 1790.
What is the Walnut Street Jail?
An extended sentence, such as an 8-year term for a 3rd Degree Felony, is served in a facility run by this government level.
What is State (or Federal)?
The type of lawsuit filed to challenge the legality or duration of confinement, often called "The Great Writ."
What is Habeas Corpus?
The correctional goal that means "getting even" for the crime committed.
What is Retribution?
The primary goal of early jails before the 1790s, where men, women, and children were often housed together.
What is Custody (or simple custody)?
This system was characterized by solitary confinement for labor, eating, and sleeping to encourage penitence.
What is the Separate System (or Pennsylvania System)?
The security level with the fewest physical barriers and a heavy focus on education and programs for non-violent offenders.
What is Minimum Security?
The Supreme Court case that set the standard that a prison regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.
What is Turner v. Safley
The goal of corrections that focuses on discouraging future crimes by both the offender (specific) and the public (general).
What is Deterrence?
The religious group in Pennsylvania credited with driving the philosophical shift toward rehabilitation.
Who are the Quakers?
This system became the dominant American prison model because it was more cost-effective and generated revenue from inmate labor.
What is the Congregate System (or Auburn System)?
The primary responsibility of a Correctional Officer (CO).
What is maintaining safety and security of the unit/offenders?
The Eighth Amendment violation that occurs when officials show deliberate indifference to an inmate's serious medical needs.
What is a violation established by Estelle v. Gamble?
The specific federal law that strongly protects an inmate's First Amendment religious freedom unless there is a compelling safety interest.
What is the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA)?
The name given to the brutal system in the South post-Civil War that was an economic replacement for slave labor.
What is the Convict Lease System?
The facility category—Jail or Prison—that houses pre-trial detainees and is run by a local/county Sheriff's Department.
What is a Jail?
The professional who monitors offenders released from prison before their sentence expires, a key role in reducing recidivism.
What is a Parole Officer?
The constitutional status of an inmate's expectation of privacy in their cell, which permits routine "shakedowns."
What is virtually no expectation of privacy?
The role of a Probation Officer, monitoring offenders as an alternative to incarceration rather than after release from prison.
What is monitoring offenders released by the court?
This is the specific constitutional protection that the Supreme Court decision in Holt v. Sarver found was violated by an entire state prison system's systemic brutality.
What is the Eighth Amendment (or the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment)?
The primary reason the Separate System was abandoned shortly after its creation.
What is high rates of mental illness and/or it was too expensive to operate?
The difference in sentence length that distinguishes Jails (short-term) from Prisons (extended).
What is one year (or sentences over one year)?
The specific constitutional protection that requires inmates to receive notice of the charge and the right to present evidence before losing good-time credits.
What is Due Process (or the Fifth/Fourteenth Amendment, as established by Wolff v. McDonnell)?
The legal avenue used to sue a government official (like a Warden or CO) for a deprivation of a constitutional right, often resulting in monetary damages.
What is Section 1983 (or 42 U.S.C. § 1983)?