M3 Incarceration, Labor & Discipline Flashcards

Flashcards for reviewing key vocabulary related to incarceration, labor, and discipline.

Workhouse Definition

An early form of penal institution designed to punish the poor through forced labor, combining welfare and punishment to discipline the 'idle' poor by compelling them to work under strict supervision.

Correctional Training Definition

Penal strategies aiming to reform inmates through structured work, discipline, and education, turning them into obedient, 'productive' citizens.

Primitive Accumulation Definition

A Marxist concept describing the violent, historical processes that created a landless, dependent working class necessary for capitalism.

Panopticon Definition

A prison design featuring a central watchtower from which a single guard could observe all inmates without them knowing whether they were being watched, symbolizing disciplinary power.

Idleness Definition

In the logic of punishment, idleness was seen as both a moral failing and a social threat, justifying harsh interventions like imprisonment and forced labor.

Myth of Reform

Crime is seen as the predictable outcome of moral decay, idleness, and a breakdown in community discipline—especially among the poor and marginalized. The criminal justice system positions itself as a corrective force.

Arc of Discipline Definition

As industrial capitalism emerged in the 19th century, so did the need to shape a disciplined, dependable labor force from formerly rural, enslaved, immigrant, or idle populations.

Technology of Power: Discipline

A form of power that individualizes, trains, and regulates—rather than just punishes, functioning not through terror but through routinization, surveillance, normalization, and internalization of authority.

Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia) Definition

A pioneering American prison designed around the principle of solitary confinement and penitence, focusing on individual rehabilitation through isolation.

Auburn Penitentiary (New York) Definition

An early 19th-century prison model emphasizing congregate labor by day (in silence) and solitary confinement by night, focusing on strict discipline, labor, and silent group work.

Congregate Model Definition

A prison regime where inmates worked together during the day (often in silence) but were otherwise kept separate, combining labor discipline with moral reform.

Infiernillos (Spanish) Definition

Literally meaning 'little hells,' infiernillos referred to the worst, most hellish conditions within Spanish colonial and Latin American prisons characterized by extreme overcrowding, violence, and brutality.

Recidivism Definition

The tendency of a convicted criminal to re-offend after being released from punishment, challenging the myth that structured punishment leads to lasting reform.

Convict Leasing Definition

A system where state governments leased out prisoners, overwhelmingly Black men, to private employers for forced labor without pay, primarily in the South after the Civil War.

Racial Threat Definition

The theory that racial disparities in punishment intensify when Black political or economic advancement threatens the dominance of white elites, leading to harsher legal responses.

Eugenics Definition

A pseudo-scientific movement that sought to improve human populations by controlling reproduction, often through forced sterilization.

Degeneracy Definition

A concept within eugenic thought that identified certain individuals or families as biologically 'unfit' or socially 'degenerate,' often targeting the poor, non-white populations, or criminals.

Experimentation (in prisons) Definition

The use of incarcerated individuals as subjects for medical experiments, often under the guise of rehabilitation or improvement, but raising deep ethical concerns about coercion and consent.

Indeterminate Sentencing Definition

System where prison authorities and parole boards determine when a prisoner would be released based on their perceived rehabilitation.

Biblio-therapy Definition

A correctional technique that used reading assignments, especially moralistic, religious, or self-help literature, to rehabilitate prisoners.

Resistance (in Prisons) Definition

Collective or individual actions by incarcerated people to challenge abusive conditions, racial violence, lack of rights, or broader structures of state oppression.

George Jackson Definition

A Black revolutionary, member of the Black Panther Party, and prison intellectual whose writings radicalized prison activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Revolutionary Class (Prisoners as) Definition

The idea that prisoners, especially Black and Brown prisoners, represent an oppressed class capable of leading a revolutionary struggle against racial capitalism.

Hands-Off Doctrine (or Era) Definition

A long-standing judicial attitude (pre-1960s) where courts refused to intervene in the internal administration of prisons, granting nearly absolute discretion to wardens and prison officials.

Social Movements (and Prisons) Definition

Broader civil rights, Black power, and New Left movements of the 1960s and 1970s that influenced and supported prison activism.

Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) Definition

A 1996 federal law designed to severely restrict prisoners’ ability to bring lawsuits about prison conditions.

Bureaucratization (of Prisons) Definition

The transformation of prisons from relatively autonomous, warden-run institutions into complex bureaucracies governed by standardized procedures, regulations, and oversight.

National Standards (for Prisons) Definition

Efforts to establish minimum conditions for prisons and jails through guidelines like the American Correctional Association standards and federal court orders.