From Discipline and Punish Class WIki
Paper Topic
I would like to approach some issues in my paper that have come up time and time again in the narratives that we've read for this class.
- change from moral to property driven crimes
- Perpetuation of women as frail beings and the downfall of all honorable men
- Factor of race on the trials and punishments of criminals
Final Draft
During the 18th Century one of the main forms of entertainment was the public execution. Coupled with the narratives of those criminals sentenced to die, the people that lived in the Americas at this time had entertainment that seems wicked and inhumane to us in our time. Public ridicule and flogging for petty crime is considered indecent to many Americans living today. However with this common perception of the humanity of public punishment comes a double standard. Even though Americans look down on countries in the Middle East that still continue with these practices, they intrigue the American people to the point that they will watch executions online. An example of the intrigue of a public execution is the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Millions of Americans tuned in to see pictures of the event on the nationwide news and viewed the video taken by a phone camera that caught footage illegally. The internet has been a great tool in the spread of information and technology as well as ideas. To understand the development of punishment and the shaping of identities we must be able to first look past hindsight bias, examine the roles of people in the 18th century, and relate those roles to their equivalent in the present time. There were a couple of ideas and identities that were tentatively defined, as is the case in every generation, by the crime narratives of the early 18th century. The identity of women was shaped by how they were described in these narratives. Women were viewed as frail, weak, needing a man to set her on the path to righteousness. They were also seen as the one who led men into temptation, whether to commit fornication or adultery, taking the blame away from the man completely. This blame of the woman for men falling into sin, goes back to the Bible, and how the Puritans viewed the Bible as law in the same manner that we follow the laws set up by our government today. In many cases the woman's word was valued as much as that of a slave. The narrative of Elizabeth Wilson is an excellent example of the worth of the woman's word. Her story goes like this. Two infants were found by the side of the road and it was evident upon discovery that they had been brutally murdered. After asking around the town authorities narrowed it down to Elizabeth Wilson who had just had twins and immediately she was apprehended, presumed guilty upon trial and sentenced to death. Once someone had been sentenced to die there was little chance of getting an appeal and having the sentence lifted. Knowing this many just went along and admitted their guilt wishing to die with a clear conscience and hoping to see their Maker in the next life. This wasn't so with Elizabeth Wilson. She claimed innocence to her grave and as the author of the narrative says, "Before, at, and after her trial, she persisted in denying the fact; her behavior was such, in general, as gave reasons to conclude she was innocent of the murder of which she was charged, or was an insensible, hardened creature, and did not expect to die for this crime"(Pillars of Salt, pg. 271). Throughout the rest of the narrative Wilson gives her testimony to what happened by the side of the road and explains the death of her infants. She did not murder those infants herself but was a witness who didn't report the crime and chose to hide it for fear of her life. Being held at gunpoint while the father of your children stomps the life out of your infant children has to crush the spirit of a woman and anyone with a heart can relate to the fear that must have kept Wilson from running to the authorities. As one can imagine Wilson was executed, but the narrative leaves the reader in an awkward position. Its unclear as to whether or not an innocent person has been executed. In other narratives the guilt is very clear and there are no doubts that the criminal has received a just punishment for crimes committed in the past. Rachel Wall was apprehended on crimes of theft and highway robbery for which she was being executed. In her narrative she lists a recollection of some of her most memorable crimes. We know this because she admits to selecting one of her crimes that she confesses to because of the appeal it will have to the public. The appeal to the public and publicity crept into these narratives towards the end of the 18th century as private public presses became available in the Americas. Wall's narrative was published in 1789 at the climax of the genre. One of the intentions of this listing from criminals was the appeal to notoriety and fame. If a criminal was on his or her way to death, why not die as one of the most celebrated criminals in all of America? An interesting twist to Wall's narrative is her blame of her husband for her treachery. 'If I had never seen him I should not have left my parents...From thence we came to Boston, where he tarried with me some time, and then went off, leaving me an entire stranger: Upon which I went to service and lived very contented, and should have remained so, had it not been for my husband; for, as soon she came back, he enticed me to leave my service and take to bad company, from which I may date my ruin. I hope my unhappy fate will be a solemn warning to him" (Pillars of Salt, pg. 284). Women weren’t the only ones that were portrayed in a certain light by these narratives. Blacks were used in these narratives as examples of not only the absence of conscience in most criminals but also as propaganda for slavery. In Thomas Powers’ narrative he confesses to the rape of a white woman and his upbringing as a slave. He feels as if he had not been punished enough as an adolescent and that contributed significantly to his continuing in his evil ways as an adult. Powers planned this rape and waited a significant amount of time to carry it out. Upon which having completed his villainy he went back to his master’s house and sat down to eat with the children of the household. The fear that many whites would have felt upon reading this narrative is unimaginable. A rapist who had no sense of conscience and guilt, who would come and sit down with those of society who are deemed as innocent, was a horrifying image of a person. It can be said that this depiction was purposed to seed fear of the black community in the hearts of the whites who were viewed as superior and humane. This hierarchy that was set up legitimized slavery in America at the start of the 18th century. Blacks, especially black men, were put into a category based on the reading of this narrative which was publicized and available for the public to read and talk about amongst themselves. Since black men were monsters capable of being as horrible as Powers was, why should they be allowed to roam about the country as free men, accountable to no one but their strange pagan gods? The main catalyst of fear was misunderstanding and difference. If someone was different from the common perception of the moral citizen then they were to be shunned and even feared as a threat to the way the society was run. Richard Frost, as well as Powers, is a quality example of what a society does when encountered with someone who doesn’t fit into the norm. Frost was a man who’s narrative was published in 1790 at the end of the era of the crime narrative. In his narrative he confessed to the murders of two father figures in his life. One being his biological father and the other one who he had worked for after being sent to live with him since his home was shattered. The first murder was out of rage for the beatings that his mother had received and the second one was out of revenge for some wrong that had been done to him. Both murders were gruesome and involved the victim being beaten to death ruthlessly. The most common assumption that readers get when reading this narrative is that Frost was insane. During his imprisonment it was recorded that he banged his head on his cell wall and explained that it was to feel the pain that his victims felt. Actions like this have the tendency to have a person barred as crazy or mentally ill. These identities are only placed on them because their actions go against the grain of society. “Normal” people wouldn’t do things like this, once a victim is gone its best to be sorrowful in the mind and leave the bodily punishment alone. This is part of the transition from bodily harm to a reformation of a criminal’s mental makeup. This act of trying to understand the pain of his victims can be seen as an act of remorse and guilt. Frost recognizes that he was wrong according to the state and its laws when he beat his father figures to death. Instead of calling him crazy, its better to say that he was in fact more sympathetic and humane than most other criminals. Not that many people after doing something so devastating would give a second thought to how much pain they had brought to someone else.
Foucault discussed this in length in his theory about punishment; we tend to see the move from bodily harm and public execution to confinement in prison as a positive progression. However with the increasing numbers of prisoners, mainly young black men, in the U.S. this obviously isn’t working out as it was planned. For many people being incarcerated is more beneficial than being free and living in piss poor conditions. So rather than to live life as a poor person they commit crimes to benefit from the penal system and receive free room and board, and a meal plan paid for by the State. Its hindsight bias that keeps our society comforted when looking at the development of the penal system in America. I would argue that this isn’t the case for most of the inmates that are housed within our prison system, but that its another way to solidify the identities set up about race and gender over time in our nation.
