This chapter focuses on the evolution of the U.S. imprisonment system and examines the relevance of the system’s development in relation to correctional psychiatry. The first section of the chapter reviews the history of American prisons, including their shifting purposes, standards, and practices. The second portion of the chapter highlights the persistent lack of regard for prisoners with mental illness throughout the history of American penology, and explains how rehabilitation theory has intersected with the diagnostics and treatment of persons experiencing psychiatric disorders while criminally confined. Moreover, the swelling number of inmates with psychiatric disorders found in correctional settings today has converted jails and prisons into ill-equipped de facto institutions that warehouse the mentally ill much like the practice of the 19th century. Indeed, while American prison systems are beginning to implement some novel accommodations for persons with psychiatric disorders, they are often subjected to the same punitive treatment of isolative confinement that was popularized during the 19th century. The chapter concludes by discussing the current status of imprisonment in the United States, noting that as a consequence of the War on Drugs more than 31 million people have been arrested and convicted for these criminal offenses, leading to systematic mass incarceration that adversely and unequally impacts people of color.

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