A Land Of Bondage

WITH LIBERTY FOR SOME: 500 YEARS OF IMPRISONMENT IN AMERICA.

By Scott Christianson. Northeastern University; 394 pages; $35. Distributed
in Britain by Biblios and AUPG; UKP33

FOR the land of the free, the United States puts an extraordinary number of
its citizens behind bars. After Russia, it has the second-highest rate of
imprisonment in the world. One in every 163 Americans is in jail or prison,
a rate six times the average in Europe. America's zeal for imprisonment is
usually attributed to a recent shift towards harsh law-enforcement
policies, especially against drug users. To some degree, this is true. The
number of people locked up has tripled since 1980. But this recent surge is
anything but an anomaly. Bondage of one sort or another has played a
central role in American history from the beginning. It is no exaggeration
to say that prisoners did as much as free men and women to establish the
United States as a nation.

Most Americans will scoff at this idea. Australia accepts its history as a
prison colony. But Americans, with the notable exception of blacks, still
cherish the idea of a country founded by hardy individualists, who spurned
the oppressions of a rigid European order to build a better society in the
wilderness of the New World. In fact, as detailed in Scott Christianson's
fascinating new book, a large proportion of white immigrants to early
America arrived in chains--as prisoners, indentured servants or bonded
labourers. Their Atlantic crossing was almost as terrible as that of the
black slaves being shipped at the same time from Africa. Between a third
and a half of white immigrants died on some voyages. Once in America, their
lot was often only marginally better than that of slaves. Their biggest
advantage over slaves was that they could look forward to being free once
their term of imprisonment or service was over. Many, of course, never
lived to see that day. For any American brought up on the more benign view
of American history taught in the nation's schools, Mr Christianson's work
will be something of a shock. But the evidence he marshals is simply too
massive to ignore.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, Britain operated a system of
severely punitive laws designed as much to provide cheap labour for its
American colonies as to curb crime. In an age when there was no established
police force, private agents called "spirits"--many of them criminals
themselves--were paid to apprehend supposed lawbreakers. Large numbers of
people--including hordes of poor or abandoned children--were simply
kidnapped off the streets of London and other big cities, and then sold
with the blessing of a magistrate as felons or bonded labourers to ship
captains, who transported them to the American colonies where they were
resold as labourers to the highest bidder. One purchaser of felons was
George Washington. This practice continued right up to the American
revolution, which caused a prison crisis in Britain when hostilities
interrupted prisoner exports.

Even those colonists who emigrated voluntarily exhibited a taste for
imprisoning others. One of the first public buildings erected in Boston, in
1632 when the town consisted of only 40 dwellings, was a "house of
correction". Over the next 250 years, as America was settled, jails and
prisons were always among the first public facilities built. For people
trying to make their way in a wild continent, this was strange. Prisons and
jails are expensive. Other societies relied more on different, cheaper ways
to maintain discipline. In fact, once jails were built, Americans spent
little on prisoners. Life "inside" was usually horrific. Frequently
prisoners were left in dark cells to starve or die in their own filth.

When larger state prisons were built, reformers sought a more enlightened
regime. Rehabilitation through penitence had a vogue--hence the term
"penitentiary". But even the best of these places were grim, involving
unbearably long stretches of solitary confinement. After visiting one such
penitentiary, Charles Dickens, well acquainted with the unsavoury English
prisons of the period, turned away appalled, denouncing extended solitary
confinement as "cruel and wrong". Most other attempts at rehabilitation
foundered on popular hostility or indifference, as they still do today.

Whatever white Americans were suffering, it is a safe rule of thumb that
black Americans suffered more. Mr Christianson's account of black slavery
is revealing on two counts. Drawing on a crop of recent studies, he derides
the curiously persistent belief that most black slaves in the South led
lives of rural contentment, except for the occasional family break-up when
someone was sold "downriver". Southern slavery was enforced with whips,
chains, beatings, rape and legally sanctioned murder. Southern whites knew
what they were doing, and reasonably lived in constant fear of a black
uprising, which then prompted them to be even more brutal. Blacks were
desperate to escape. Many took enormous risks to do so. Those caught often
paid with their lives.

Mr Christianson also makes clear why free blacks, throughout America's
history, have supposedly committed a disproportionate number of crimes and
suffered similarly disproportionate rates of imprisonment. It is not
because they have been more disposed towards criminality but because, well
into the 20th century, they were legally barred from doing almost anything
to better themselves. In many states they were excluded from all but the
most menial jobs. Until the Civil War, free blacks had almost no legal
rights of any kind, even in the North. After the war, most were not much
better off.

Incredibly high rates of imprisonment continue to scar American blacks
today. The incarceration rate for black men is eight times that for whites.
Most inner-city black children grow up with a father, uncle or big brother
in prison. The social costs of this are enormous.

In his final chapter, Mr Christianson describes the burgeoning
prison-industrial complex, based on prison labour, which has brought wealth
to many smaller towns and cities where prisons are based. America seems to
have come full circle--imprisonment is once again as much about profit as
punishment. As this book makes clear, popular support for mass
incarceration and ever longer prison sentences is not merely a by-product
of the past two decades' war on crime, but a consistent and ugly side of
American society which has remained unquestioned for far too long.