Unit C Blog #15

Women and men's prisons differ in ways that go right along with the current pop culture stereotypes. In the past women were forced to do work that would be considered very ladylike. They were forced to do things like cooking and cleaning. They had to sew, garden, and prepare meals for others. This is the type of work that they thought that women should be doing. Giving the women jobs like these forced others to follow in the paths of stereotypes and believe the things that they heard and learned about in popular culture as well as the media. Men's prisons were full of manual labor. They were in an "Auburn" system in which they were very militarized and used beatings as a means of punishment. This type of system made prisoners almost slave, but in a military form as they were forced to walk around in tight conformity, never looking each other in the eyes. The women prisons were usually not associated with beatings, however there was a lot of talk of rape going on at these prisons all of the time. Male guards used to rape the female prisoners because there was a lack of judgement and respect related with prisons of the past.

Reformers often tried to fix things in these prisons by comparing the facilities with other state facilities, but serious changes to the systems were not made until the 1900's when ethical laws were set into place about how a prisoner could be treated. Many instances of different treatment for male and female prisoners were scattered throughout the United States. There were also several different types of prison systems depending on the geographic location within the U.S. Now prisons are privatized and ran independently with little interruption for the state. Prisons, as well as most other things, have fallen victim to the capitalist ways and are now seen as a high profit maker. Unfortunately.