ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the basic themes of imprisonment in the United States emerge. In the early 1600s, via royal proclamation requested by the Virginia Company, England began process of exporting thousands of vagrants and other criminals to the American colonies. Criminal law in England classified many violations as capital offenses, and under the threat of execution, prisoners awaiting trial usually agreed to exportation. In 1619, a Dutch man-of-war arrived at a Virginia port and sold to the colonists 20 persons stolen from West Africa. Those first African Americans were held in bondage until 1661 and then proclaimed by law to be slaves. Shortly after American Revolution, penitentiary was born in Philadelphia, where part of the Walnut Street Jail was transformed into a long-term lock-up. The congregate system was implemented at New York's first state prison, which began receiving inmates in 1797. In 1891, world's first electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky", replaced the gallows as the means of execution at Sing-Sing.
