ABSTRACT
The institutions that had been intended to exemplify the humanitarian advances of republican government were not merely inadequate to the ideal but were actually an embarrassment and a rebuke. Failure to do good was one thing; a proclivity to do harm quite another - and yet the evidence was incontrovertible that brutality and corruption were endemic to the institutions. The awareness of the gross inadequacies of prisons and asylums was widespread. Newspapers, state commissions, and philanthropic societies reported the evidence in vivid detail. Not surprisingly, laxity and brutality went hand in hand. Wardens in the 1830's had been able to impose order by strict military routines, rules of silence, and one-man-to-a-cell arrangements. More modern punishments were in use too, particularly solitary confinement to the "dungeon", as it was known. Perhaps the most incredible torture instrument of the period was the "water crib", in use at the Kansas prison.
