ONE REASON TO VISIT AMERICA
During 1831 and 1832, two Frenchmen, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de
Beaumont, toured the United States. After their visit, each wrote a book. Beaumont's
volume is about slavery, while Tocqueville's is the classic
Democracy in America.
Publication of the books obscured the original purpose of their visit: the two men had
been sent to the United States as delegates from the French government to inspect
the American prison system. They were among many Europeans who visited the
United States with the same intention, because the modern prison system for the
confinement of convicted criminals was invented in the United States in the 1790s.
Places of confinement were not new. London had its Tower and Paris its Bastille.
However, these were for confining political prisoners, not criminals in the ordinary
sense. The common jail has existed since at least 1166, when England's King Henry
II ordered jails built. Jails were then, as they are now, mainly for prisoners awaiting
trial, but they also held petty offenders such as beggars and debtors. What was new
about the American prison system was its purpose. It was designed more as
a
means of reforming the offender than as punishment for committing a crime.
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