which was the first prison designed to house sentenced offenders in the united states called
History of United States prison systems Incarceration as a form of criminal punishment is "a comparatively recent episode in Anglo-American jurisprudence," according to historian Adam J. Hirsch.[2] Before the nineteenth century, sentences of penal confinement were rare in the criminal courts of British North America.[3] But penal incarceration had been utilized in England as early as the reign of the Tudors, if not before.[4] When post-revolutionary prisons emerged in United States, they were, in Hirsch's words, not a "fundamental departure" from the former American colonies' intellectual past.[5] Early American prisons systems like Massachusetts' Castle Island Penitentiary, built in 1780, essentially imitated the model of the 1500s English workhouse.[5]
Life imprisonment Life imprisonment (also known as imprisonment for life, life in prison,[citation needed] a life sentence, a life term, lifelong incarceration, life incarceration or simply life) is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted persons are to remain in prison either for the rest of their natural life or until paroled. Crimes for which depending on a country a person could receive this sentence include murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, blasphemy,[1] apostasy, terrorism, severe child abuse, rape, child rape, espionage, treason, high treason, drug dealing, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe cases of fraud, severe cases of financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage in English law, and aggravated cases of arson, kidnapping, burglary, or robbery which result in death or grievous bodily harm, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and in certain cases genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, certain war crimes or any three felonies in case of three strikes law. Life imprisonment (as a maximum term) can also be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offenses causing death.[2] This sentence does not exist in all countries and Portugal was the first to abolish life imprisonment, in 1884.