[148] Prison, as a means by which society deals with criminal behavior, has come into widespread use only within the last three centuries and is the result of penal practices that have developed over a long period. In the history of penal administration, several periods can be identified in which different systems of punishment were prevalent. In the early Middle Ages, penance and fines were the preferred methods of punishment, but in the later Middle Ages they were gradually replaced by capital and corporal penalties. While capital punishment and bodily mutilations continued to be used in the sixteenth century, there also developed the practice of exploiting the labor power of prisoners in the interests of the state. The idea of penal labor was not new; its prototypes had already been created in the opus publicum of antiquity. The reappearance of this practice in western Europe in the early years of the sixteenth century was closely related to the military needs of the emerging national states. For the Spanish rulers, the demand for rowers on the galleys became particularly urgent at this time, with the onset of a period of naval wars in the Mediterranean. In the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella penal servitude was introduced as an alternative form of corporal punishment more useful to the state than other existing afflictive penalties. As the years passed, a continuing need to fill the galley benches made galley service the most common form of punishment. [149] By the end of the century, free oarsmen had virtually disappeared, and laws had been enacted extending service at the oar to all kinds of offenders. The usual terms were from two to ten years, but experienced oarsmen customarily were illegally retained after completing their sentences.

While convicts made up one part of the galley chusma, slaves -- purchased, sentenced, or captured in war (these were Moslems) -- constituted the rest. Their numbers gradually increased in the seventeenth century, and by the 1660s they represented almost one-half of the chusma. Slaves received the same food and treatment as the convicts, but their duties were more varied. Their principal occupation was rowing, but they regularly were sent ashore chained together in pairs to draw water and collect firewood. They also served as assistants to the guards and as servants of the galley officials.

Life on the galleys for both slaves and convicts was below subsistence. The rations, consisting of biscuits and vegetable stews made of beans and/or rice and water, were sometimes putrid and usually short. Lack of meat and fresh fruits and vegetables made deficiency diseases endemic. Oarsmen were always chained, and when ill were not permitted hospitalization but were treated at their benches by barber-surgeons. Even so, life on the galleys could be preferable to incarceration (given jail conditions in this period) or freedom in poverty and destitution. When sailing ships replaced the galleys in the eighteenth century, the former oarsmen were used ashore as laborers in the ports and arsenals.

In the 1560s, sentences to the mines of Almadén, whose mercury was needed to refine Mexican silver, were introduced as an alternative to the galleys. The Fuggers of Augsburg, administrators of the mines, asked the king to grant them convict labor when they failed to meet their production quotas in 1566. Here, as on the galleys, the use of convicts and slaves was dictated by the fact that free labor could not be obtained at reasonable cost.

Living conditions at Almadén were better than on the galleys. Meat, bread, and wine were rationed daily in sufficient quantities, clothes were issued, and hospitalization was provided. On the other hand, mercury poisoning was endemic, especially at the furnaces, and many men died insane or in agony. The chances of surviving [150] one's sentence were considerably better on the galleys, in spite of conditions there that appeared to be far worse. Historically, Almadén is important because it set the example of turning convict labor over to private contractors for exploitation, a system that reached its fullest development in Spanish America.

Another form of penal servitude that developed in Spain in the early modern era was the presidio sentence. It arose in the sixteenth century as a means of providing garrisons for the Spanish presidios in North Africa. In the beginning, noble and wealthy offenders were sentenced there to serve at arms (desterrados), but a change occurred around the middle of the seventeenth century. During those years, Spain was extending its network of North African presidios, and there was a great need for soldiers and laborers. Coincidentally, war, revolts, epidemics, and famines at home and abroad created a severe population and financial crisis. To fill the manpower gap, felons of all kinds began to be sentenced to the presidios in North Africa to work on the fortifications and to fight. By the end of the seventeenth century the character of the North African presidios had already been set, although they were not formally organized as penal institutions until the eighteenth century.

After the abolition of the galleys in the mid-eighteenth century, their place was taken by the peninsular naval arsenals. A reform statute of 1771 formally created an organization of arsenal presidios, and for the first time separated prisoners and assigned labor to them according to the gravity of their crimes. After 1771, the arsenal presidios of Cartagena, La Carraca, and El Ferrol became the principal Spanish penal institutions. They were finally abolished in 1818 -- some thirty years after the completion of major construction -- because with the ruin of the Spanish navy at Trafalgar there was no longer need for forced labor drafts. Furthermore, by this time convict labor had become more expensive than free labor.

In the history of penal servitude as a punishment in criminal law, the naval arsenals occupy an intermediate stage between the punitive hard labor of the galleys and the rehabilitative labor of the modern correctional prisons. In the beginning, the system of the galleys was carried over into the arsenals, but gradually, under the influence of the eighteenth-century penal reformers, changes were introduced. Finally, in 1804 a system of penal practice was adopted that com- [151] bined the utilitarian needs of the state with the object of correction. The naval arsenals thus preserved the legacy of the galleys, but at the same time laid the foundations for the progressive penal systems of the modern era.

The North African presidios also assumed their final form as penal institutions in the eighteenth century. The distance of these presidios from Spain resulted in a chronic situation of loose administration, fraud, and corruption, while desertion was a constant problem. In 1743, a formal code of rules and regulations (the first of several such ordinances) was introduced, with the result that conditions slowly improved. There was some progress in the reduction of desertion resulting both from a series of innovative measures to combat it and more importantly, in the last years of the century, from a series of restitution treaties with the North African states. Official attempts to limit the population growth of the presidios because of financial and military reasons could not prevent some former presidiarios from staying on, especially if their skills were needed: In this way, the groundwork was laid for the transformation of the North African presidios into penal colonies in the nineteenth century.

Like the construction of naval arsenals and military fortifications, the public works envisioned by the Bourbons, especially Charles III (1759-88), required the mobilization of a large labor force at minimum cost, and, once again, convict workers were used. The practice began with the impressment of gypsies and vagabonds and the sentencing of minor offenders. It grew with the contractors' petitions to employ penal labor, especially on the highways around Madrid and Málaga, districts where there was an overflow of prisoners in the jails. The public works presidios were urban and metropolitan, and therefore only petty offenders were sentenced to them; the rest were sent to the arsenals and North Africa.

This system was given definite organization by the Reglamento of 1807, which removed the public works presidios from military control and placed them under civilian direction. With the change to civilian status, the presidios became institutions of correctional (rather than expiatory) labor, in which the aim was to reform the offender through useful work. This reform was completed in 1834, [152] when the public works presidios were incorporated into the new penal code as correctional presidios for minor offenders.

In the New World, as in Spain, convicts were an important source of cheap labor. Penal workers were regularly hired out to private employers, but in the eighteenth century their major sphere of employment was in the public sector. After the Seven Years War (1756-63), Spain strengthened the defenses of San Juan and Havana, where presidiarios were imported to replace black slaves, who were too expensive. Prisoners were shipped from Mexico and Spain to the Caribbean presidios, and there also existed a steady exchange of convicts among the presidios of North Africa, Spain, and the Caribbean. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century these presidios formed a network of penal institutions that embraced the Spanish empire.

Penal servitude, which reached its highest point of development in the eighteenth century, was stimulated by the utilitarian spirit of the age and the reforms of the Bourbon rulers. In previous centuries forced labor was used primarily for serious offenders, but in the eighteenth century it began to be applied to all antisocial elements and delinquents with the objective of making them useful to the state. Influenced by corporate interpretations of the good society, which included the belief that every subject had an obligation to contribute to the well-being of the country and the state and that idleness was the root of all vice, the government vigorously pursued vagabonds, minor offenders, the unemployed, and the destitute. Large categories of antisocial offenders, from vagrants to disobedient sons to fornicators, were impressed under antivagrancy laws into the armed forces. The unfit were sent to labor in the presidios and arsenals.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the idea of the house of correction for paupers who could not fight or work -- the aged, cripples, women, and children -- was adopted in Spain. These institutions, common to the rest of Europe in the early modern era, had long been opposed in Spain on the grounds that removal of mendicants from the streets would prevent the faithful from fulfilling their religious obligation to dispense charity, and would deprive persons not accused of any specific offense of their right to personal liberty. In the eighteenth century, with the new emphasis on the economic [153] benefits to be gained by the state from forcing the poor and idle to work, the principle of confinement gained support. From the 1750s on, workhouses were established where it was hoped that forced labor would teach the poor skills and the habit of industry. Despite the importance that the supporters of the workhouses placed on them as institutions of social transformation, their penal aspects were obvious from the beginning. They held a mixed population of vagrants, beggars, and petty offenders, but there also were orphans, the crippled, and the insane, many of whom were incapable of learning a trade and were simply confined there for most of their lives. In the 1780s the workhouses began to house more and more minor offenders, particularly women (mainly thieves and syphilitic prostitutes).

The houses of correction were not thought of as places of imprisonment; rather, they held prisoners sentenced to forced labor. Imprisonment in this period was little used in Spanish civil law, and jails were detention centers for persons awaiting trial or the execution of their sentences. Conditions in Spanish jails, as in jails in other parts of western Europe, were appalling for most prisoners. Jailers purchased their positions from the king and supported themselves by charging prisoners for their food, drink, and other necessities. In addition, there were special fees levied for such things as better quarters, removal of irons, entrance, and release. Destitute prisoners had to depend on charity -- in particular, charitable societies organized specifically for that purpose -- and it was through these associations that the idea of confinement to correct offenders rather than punish and exploit them came into being.

In the last two decades of the eighteenth century the Asociación de Señoras of Madrid was propagating the views of Cesare Beccaria, John Howard, and their Spanish disciples, especially Manuel de Lardizábal. In accord with Howard's idea that useful labor was the principal regenerating tool, the Associación de Señoras introduced a program into the Madrid jails whereby young females were segregated and placed under a regime of seclusion, work, and religious instruction. A similar plan was introduced for men by the Asociación de la Caridad, also of Madrid. In the beginning, the work programs were voluntary, but when they proved unpopular, the [154] Associations began to advocate a reformed prison system based on compulsory labor to bring about rehabilitation. When imprisonment as a punishment was introduced in the nineteenth century, this program was adopted, the prisons and presidios became workshops.

The rapid growth of penal servitude in the eighteenth century can be viewed against the background of a conjunction of socioeconomic factors such as the decline of slavery, an increase in the number of convicted criminals, and a rise in the demand for unskilled workers in the public sphere. By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, slavery was in its final stage on the Iberian Peninsula. High prices for black slaves had limited their presence to a few noble houses, where they served mainly as objects of decoration, while frequent prisoner exchanges between the North African states and Spain had decreased the number of Moslem slaves to a negligible figure. At the same time that slaves were becoming scarce, an increase in the convicted criminal population made available a larger body of potential penal laborers. Coincidentally, an extension of the projects undertaken by the state -- for example, the construction of military fortifications, roads, canals, and municipal improvements -- heightened the demand for unskilled labor. Despite the growth of population in the second half of the eighteenth century, this need could not be met by free labor because of a (claimed) financial inability to pay wages that would attract workers from the free market. Even when slightly higher wages were paid, as occurred during the early years of construction at El Ferrol, free laborers still were reluctant to work on these projects because of poor working conditions. On the other hand, experience had shown that convicts were ideally suited to such labor. From the government's perspective, they were inexpensive to maintain and thoroughly expendable.

Penal policy thus expressed in practice state employment of the last resort, which exploited the large marginal sector. Moreover, the eighteenth-century reforms were instituted just when such a policy became economically disadvantageous and a new ideology could gain acceptance, one that was more suited to the new social needs that began to gain attention. Penal policy was now ready to adapt the enlightened ideas of rehabilitation through a regimen of social [155] discipline and compulsory learning of skills. With the adoption of punitive imprisonment in the nineteenth century, the retributive hard labor of the galleys and presidios was transformed into a system of rehabilitative forced labor that became part of the modern prison system.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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