NORTHAMPTON — From the corporal punishment of the 1600s to the future of the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction, avid historian and former Northampton District Court judge Michael Ryan covered all aspects incarceration system Saturday afternoon in Northampton.
Nearly 100 people attended the talk, titled “Punishment in Paradise,” at Forbes Library. The event is part of “States of Incarceration: Pioneer Valley,” a local collaboration among several towns in the region inspired by a national traveling exhibit that aims to address issues around the incarceration system in the United States.
Ryan, a fourth-generation Northampton resident, gave a sweeping overview of the incarceration system in the Paradise City starting from its origins in the mid-1600s. Ryan named notable sheriffs and criminal cases as he went.
“The history of capital punishment in Hampshire County is a microcosm on the history of capital punishment in the United States,” Ryan said. “Here, 13 people were executed between 1676 and 1901. Five were immigrants. Three were black. Three were Native American. Three were women. At least two were insane. Two were clearly innocent. There were eight others whose guilt was questionable. All were poor. Eleven had no jobs.”
Ryan said the incarceration system has not been historically based on science, but on what he calls the “unholy trinity”: racism, sexism and classism.
“When the state kills,” Ryan said. “It kills racial, ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants, peons, powerless … and mentally disturbed people whose commonality is poverty.”
In the 1600s, Ryan said, corporal punishment was popular. Wrongdoers were put in the stocks in the town center, now the intersection of King Street and Main Street. For more serious crimes, including a soldier accused “being a coward” in retreat from the Battle of Turner’s Falls in 1672 during King Phillip’s war, death by hanging was routine.
Women, Native Americans, black people and the poor were disproportionately punished, Ryan said. A woman could be punished for “resisting sex, being a scold, a shrill, a gossip or an eavesdropper,” Ryan said.
Corporal punishment methods included lashes on bare skin and the ducking stool, a contraption that would plunge the offender into water, Ryan said.
Ryan also touched on the trial of Mary Parsons, a Northampton woman accused of witchcraft in the 1670s. The crime was punishable by death, Ryan said, but Parsons was acquitted by a jury of 12 men in Boston after she “languished for months” in a prison cell.
As time went on, corporal punishment gave way to the deprivation of freedom, which people of the time believed was a better way to prevent crime. Jails had been used primarily for debtors, but at the turn of the 19th century they began to house those accused of crimes.
Jails were cramped and leadership was strict. Ryan told the story of Allen Adams, a vagabond who killed Amherst tobacco farmer Moses Dickinson with an axe for $120 in 1874. He was sentenced to death and hanged in the north wing of the Union Street jail.
“He did not go gently into the night,” Ryan said, adding that Allen swore at the minister, the clerk and even at God as he dropped.
Northampton’s incarceration system moved toward a progressive model in 1963 when John Boyle was elected sheriff. He believed in feeding inmates three times per day, Ryan said, and his penal beliefs were based on “hard work and good food.” He allowed inmates to participate in work release programs like shoveling in public parks. Boyle required they be provided a “hearty lunch” and smoke breaks, Ryan said.
Though Boyle’s progressive views were controversial among Northampton’s conservative residents, who nicknamed the jail “Boyle’s Hotel,” Ryan said Boyle’s programs were replicated around the country.
When Boyle died in office, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis appointed former Sheriff Bob Garvey to serve in his place. Garvey was elected following the interim period and served as Hampshire County Sheriff for more than three decades.
Garvey, a former teacher, continued Boyle’s progressive legacy at the jail, Ryan said.
“He brought an education background and made it an institution of higher learning for people with social, emotional and addiction problems,” Ryan said, noting a six-month life skills course Garvey created has become a national model.
Hampshire County has a recidivism rate of less than 20 percent, Ryan said, the lowest in the state.
But the evolution of Northampton’s prison system is “one small piece of the puzzle,” Ryan warned.
“We can become complacent when we look at the House of Correction in Hampshire County, but there’s a much bigger world out there,” Ryan said. “All of these evil programs, the war on drugs, mandatory sentencing, the tough on crime programs, all of them cause more damage than they cure. They are outgrowths of what I call the unholy trinity: racism, classism and sexism.”
Ryan said he is particularly disturbed by the high incarceration rates of young latino and black men in the United States.
“I urge people to be active, to be vocal and to stop this madness of incarcerating the masses,” Ryan said. “I personally think the war on drugs is over. When the war is over, the first thing they do is free the prisoners. So let them go.”
The national traveling exhibit “States of Incarceration: A National Dialogue of Local Histories” is being co-hosted by Historic Northampton and Forbes Library until March 30. Information can be found at pv-soi.org.
Stephanie Murray can be reached at stephaniemur@umass.edu.