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67 Prison J. iii (1987)

handle is hein.journals/prsjrnl67 and id is 1 raw text is: Preface For 200 years, The Pennsylvania Prison Society has worked for the betterment of both prisons and prisoners. A constant tool in that work has been the use of the written word to disseminate information. In the early decades, this information was promul- gated through the use of pamphlets and Memorials, and, since 1845, in The Prison Journal (known until 1921 as the Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy). From time to time, the Society's history has been traced in the pages of the Journal. In this our bicentennial year, it seems appropriate to go back and look at the work of the Society as reported in the pages of the Journal. Unlike the more recent journals, earlier editions covered the activities of the Society in detail, and thus are an excellent repository of our history well into this cen- tury. As the author of this issue, I undertook to read through the 141 years of Prison Journals. The task was never boring. It was, however, at times discouraging. While there has been progress and conditions have improved, many of the problems addressed by our predecessors are ones which we, the Society, at our bicentennial, still grapple with today. In this Journal, some of those problems are discussed, and the efforts of the Society to resolve them are traced. In the year of its founding, the Society set in motion the process that eventually led to the authorization of funds for the construction of Eastern State Penitentiary, which embodied the philosophy of separate or solitary confinement known as the Penn- sylvania System of Prison Discipline. At the time, given the horrendous conditions at the Walnut Street Jail, the idea seemed sound. As we look back in the late twentieth century, we are horrified at the system's evolution. For over sixty years, the Journal was used to explain and defend that system. The first section of this Journal explores this long-term commitment of the Society. Other issues were of concern to the Society as well and are discussed in subsequent sections of this Journal. They include the treatment of mentally ill and retarded, the unique problems of women offenders, problems of sentencing, and the importance of casework. In 1963, the format of the Journal changed. Rather than an in-house publication describing the work of the Prison Society, the Prison Journal took on a national perspec- tive, with articles from authors around the country on selected issues of importance. As a result, while the early work of the Society is well documented and thus easily report- ed in this Journal, it was not possible to provide a complete, chronological history of the Society via the pages of preceding Journals. What I have tried to do is to give this generation of readers some idea of the past priorities and accomplishments of The Pennsylvania Prison Society. Alexine L. Atherton, Ph.D. President The Pennsylvania Prison Society Summer 1987 iii

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