The penalty of crime has changed throughout the years. According to our textbook, in the Sumerian and Babylonian time, crime utilized death, mutilation, whipping, forced silence and forced labor for others as a part of punishment. Throughout the years, prisons such as Pennsylvania and Auburn systems were established. These systems were established with the idea of prisons being locked up in their own cells. There have been some bumps in the road to but, forth that effort of single celled prisons. “Then as now, however, state legislatures were reluctant to provide the capital and operating budgets to accommodate the ever-increasing numbers of prisoners. Almost all prison cells were designed for single inhabitants, with dining, work, education, and recreational facilities corresponding to the fixed number of cells.” (Bencivenga, 1984) There are many types of prisons in America now. Although, in todays’ time, mutilation and whipping are not a means of punishment from guards, it does happen. We have seen history expose cases of guards being inhumane to prisoners. Today’s prisons allow prisons more freedom then in the past. Some prisons have court yards, animal rehabilitation programs and even expanding their education by allowing them to work for their GED. One part of prison that has stayed in most prisons is solitary confinement where the prison is locked up by themselves sometimes hours, days and months at a time.
