William Penn's religious reforms in colonial Pennsylvania's corrections system

Correction System Reformer: William Penn
William Penn was the son of an English nobleman. He was a deeply religious Quaker and before coming to America to assume responsibility for the lands bequeathed to him by King Charles II in repayment of a familial debt of honor the king owed William’s father, Penn had actually served time in the Tower of London for his religious views. He had been a strident Quaker—much to the consternation of his own father, who had hoped to see his son serve the King at his royal court. Penn had converted to Quakerism during his time in Ireland putting down an Irish rebellion in the 17th century. However, it was later, during his time in the Tower that he wrote a classic of Protestant Christian literature, No Cross, No Crown, which he penned at the age of 25, and which solidified his beliefs as a Quaker and helped to push him towards more missionary work (Nelson). Thus, from his earliest days as an adult it can be seen that Penn was a serious student of theology and of humanity—and his reforms in corrections would show as much in Pennsylvania, which he founded thanks to a charter from the King, who wished both to satisfy the young Penn’s ambitions vis-à-vis Quakerism and to rid himself of the Quakers in England that he wanted out of the way. Penn wanted to apply a Quaker way of life to all thinks, and the charter in the New World helped him to do just that. When it came to applying Christian principles to justice and corrections in Pennsylvania, William Penn paved the way for a radical, entirely un-Puritanical approach to imprisonment (though the Quakers would also embrace the idea of solitary confinement in hopes of promoting contemplation and “sober reflection and penitence” (Clark 350)—a practice that many experts have since come to condemn—and a practice that Quakers themselves have said actually came from a Calvinist—not a Quaker (Friends Committee on National Legislation). This paper will discuss the background of William Penn and some of the reforms he instituted in the corrections system in Pennsylvania (Dimon).
One of the biggest impressions on Penn’s religious viewpoint came early on in his life from a Protestant theologian he met while a young man in Paris. The theologian was Moise Amyraut and he had adopted a Christian humanist perspective that was very much different from the strict, Calvinist perspective which emphasized guilt and predestination. Amyraut taught Penn that tolerance and free will were the main points to emphasize in religion—that people should respect the decisions of others and not seek to lord it over them (Fantel). Penn gained a great deal of humanist thought from Amyraut that would later influence his approach to corrections.
Penn took charge of the new land which he dubbed Sylvania and to which the King prefixed Penn- thus turning the new colony into Pennsylvania, over which the Younger had control as governor. Penn believed strongly in religious freedom and thus welcomed other persecuted sects into the colony. Part of his humanist outlook was that people deserved to be able to worship as they saw fit—and this too would inform his sense of how crime should be punished. Criminals were not to be viewed as irredeemable but rather as individuals who needed time to figure out their own place in the world. In this sense, Penn’s penal system was a forerunner of the modern system used in states like Norway, where criminals are given a great deal of freedom to work, express themselves, and live basic ordinary lives (albeit on an island community that is technically a prison) (Moore). Penn wanted his people to feel free and to be invited to feel like a human being should feel like: he wanted to promote connectivity with God rather than to make prisoners feel like they were animals. In today’s modern corrections facilities in America, Penn’s methods would seem extravagant, radical, liberal and inappropriate—but for the early days of Pennsylvania, they were a perfect expression of the kind of Quakerism Penn embraced. In fact, they were an expression of the lessons Penn himself had learned from his various times spent in prisons for his missionary work—not just in London but also in Holland.
For example, Penn took from the Dutch penal system the idea of prison labor—where work is meant to cultivate a work ethic in the individual: male prisoners “worked in ‘rasping houses’ finishing and shaping wood, and women worked in ‘spin houses’ spinning yarn” (Friends Committee on National Legislation). Penn’s reforms to criminal justice brought a humanized form of penalization to his colony—though by 1718 English criminal law overrode Penn’s and the colony was obliged to accept the death penalty and other corporal punishments, which Penn himself had outlawed. The death penalty in Pennsylvania, for instance, had been eradicated completely except in the case of pre-meditated murder. Quakers in the World note that Penn “provided for rehabilitation, as he stipulated that prisoners should be helped to learn a trade, so that they could make an honest living when they were released. These were radical reforms for his time, putting into practice his Quaker faith in equality and the possibility of nurturing ‘that of God’ in everyone.” In this sense, Penn’s prisons were rather more progressive than in other Protestant colonies: Penn advocated reforming human behavior through workshops rather than through confinement and corporal punishment. Penn promoted rehabilitation, not just mere punishment.
However, Penn was still a Protestant and his laws were reflective of the Protestant/Puritanical sensibility of the time. For example, violations for which a person could be punished in Pennsylvania included swearing, gambling, drunkenness, and even theater plays (Dobree). The Puritans were not lovers of the stage and the works of Shakespeare, for example, were viewed as anathema, even though they are today considered some of the most compelling plays for their depictions of human nature and their range of human expression. Penn, for all his insistence upon humanism and the humane treatment of convicts, failed to appreciate the power of the stage in having a humanizing effect on society.
Ultimately, Penn’s reforms in the penal system clashed with the direction that the Calvinists and the English Protestants chose to take the criminal justice system. The approach of the latter was to insist on harsh and stern penalties as a means of deterrence to crime. Punitive measures were what characterized the American system of criminal justice, and in spite of Penn’s promotion of rehabilitation and reform in his own colony Pennsylvania had to acquiesce to the English system in the end.
Penn was not in America for a great many years and only stayed long enough to see his charter established and his civil laws instituted. Upon return to England, he ran into legal, family and financial troubles and had to rely on his fellow Quakers to help him avoid debtors’ prison. Penn’s legacy in Pennsylvania remained, however, in a variety of ways: the Quakers themselves followed his example in continuously pushing for more reforms. Penn thus left an example of how Quakers might apply their spiritual impulses to the prison penal system. Dr. Rush, for instance, advocated for a “kind of punishment that combined concepts of physical pain, labor, solitude, watchfulness, silence, cleanliness and a simple diet. He recommended remote locations for prisoners, and doors that creaked when they opened and closed with “an echo…that shall deeply pierce the soul” (Friends Committee on National Legislation). Though this particular reform was not put into practice, it was emblematic of the way the Quakers, inspired by Penn, continued to advocate for reform in their community. The Quakers did incorporate solitary confinement into their prison system in 1790 in Philadelphia, whereas prior to this inmates were kept in one large room all together. The idea behind solitary confinement was that it would give hardened criminals more opportunity to reflect on their lives and draw nearer to God.