1. Quakers who are generally referred to as Members of the Religious Society Of Friends are described as those who are concerned with living out their faith in the life they lead as compared to how they define their faith. Their silent and straightforward style of worship usually provides them with a spiritual platform for their effort to improve the world, and this adds more value to how they worship. Quakers thrive on their simple slogan of simplicity, peace, equality, and integrity. Out their touchstones to be an advocacy for fairness to all, they have from time immemorial sprung activities such as staging campaigns of abolishing slavery, offering excellent conditions at the workplaces, and addressing sexism and racism both in the United States and beyond (Riley, 2018). Most if not all Quakers have contributed towards reforming the correctional systems of their day. According to them, individuals can change, and so they have usually majored of reforms that result in positive change like improved prison conditions, more education opportunities, and aid with addressing violent impulses among others. In the modern times, Quakers have centered their focus on supporting restorative justice.
2. The Walnut Street Jail was established with the intention of imprisoning condemned criminals in America. The prison was beginning by Dr. Benjamin Rush who during his time was a leader of Philadelphia society prisons. After he had received a Quaker code, he thought of setting up the first American prison with a routine of self-consideration and hard work to repatriate criminality out of prisoners. The operations of Walnut Jail concentrated on keeping in individual cells, no talking, and putting masks on inmates while moving them around and so prisoners could not identify with each other (Rubin, 2017). In this jail also, prisoners were engaged in various activities inside cells, and there was strict discipline, religious studies as well as solitary and silent confinement. Walnut Street Jail majored mostly on the offenders’ reformation as their primary objective. While inside Walnut jail, convicts were taught how to read and write and reflect and repent their wrongdoings. The term penitentiary was born out of penance and engaged in securing facilities that could confine prisoners while serving their jail term. All these descriptions are what made Walnut Street Jail different from the other contemporary "workhouses.”
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3. The success of Walnut Street Jail is termed as that which could not live long even if the Quakers had set a good intention while contributing to its set up. At first, the Walnut jail appeared successful but as time went on the matter of housing inmates outweighed the desire among the officials of prison to rehabilitate prisoners. Overcrowding also characterized Walnut jail, and so inmates could not bear with the condition anymore (Rubin, 2017). There was also no sign that inmates at Walnut Street jail were being reformed given they were confined in solitude cells. The Auburn systems set out in New York were regarded higher than the rehabilitation systems at Walnut, this system and prisoners banned Pennsylvania as the conditions of confining inmates could work for ten hours a day and have time to rest. By 1830s, Walnut had outlasted its practicality, and it was then closed down in 1835. The prison or Walnut jail for that matter was burnt down later, and a library erected in its place.
References
Riley, J. (2018). Seventeenth through Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia Quakers as the First Advocates for Insane, Imprisoned, and Impoverished Populations. Perceptions , 4 (1). Retrieved from https://tuljournals.temple.edu/index.php/perceptions/article/view/45
Rubin, A. (2017). Pennsylvania Prison System. The Encyclopedia of Corrections , 1-5. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118845387.wbeoc260
