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Prison Architecture Reflects Evolving Penal Theory
For a photographer, the late afternoon sun playing across the sandstone façade of a walled and towered fortress is a powerful draw. Add more than 100 years of the best and worst of raw human emotion and it becomes irresistible.
So why had no photographer yet chronicled the history of Idaho’s Old Penitentiary? That was the question on Peter Wollheim’s mind in the early 1990s as the Boise State University communication professor took his photojournalism students out to the historic site on Warm Springs Avenue.
What could be a better site, he thought, to teach his students about photography as a tool to communicate? Opened as a single cellhouse in 1870, the Old Idaho Penitentiary is just one of four territorial prisons still standing in the U.S. Built using blueprints from Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C., the late Italian Renaissance design offers visual interest as well as solid stone construction.
Wollheim planned to show his class around the site and view a pictorial history. When he found out a history didn’t exist, he set out to compile one. “I thought there would be old photos,” he says, “but mostly I found blueprints.” So he took 
his own photographs, capturing not only the architectural interest of the century-old prison, but also the history of penology through several enlightened phases.
“The initial idea of a penitentiary is from penitent,” says Wollheim, referring to the prevailing theory at the time ground was broken on the territorial prison. “They would lock prisoners in isolated cells, give them a restricted diet and a Bible, and hope they would repent and come out as better people. The problem is it drives people insane. It doesn’t work.”
Idaho Penitentiary administrators apparently agreed. In stacks of old annual reports, a series of wardens opined on current theories of confinement, rehabilitation and recidivism. Often, those theories led directly to new building projects, such as both a shoe and a shirt factory during the “work saves people” era, a library when the prevailing thought was that education led to reform and double bunks during an era focused on improving social skills.”
Even once-public spectacles such as hanging, Idaho’s proscribed method for capital punishment until late in the 20th century, were eventually subjected to modern thought. The gallows that were once prominently displayed in an area that now boasts a peaceful rose garden were moved inside a cellblock when such displays were declared to be too traumatizing to effectively dissuade future crimes.
“Architecture really did reflect whole theories of penology and prison administration,” says Wollheim. Starting with the dank and oppressive sandstone castle with high walls and looming guard towers, prison design slowly progressed to the current open and airy model seen in the current state prison opened in late 1973.
Financial limitations also played a part in prison design and construction. More than one inmate at the Old Penitentiary helped design additional buildings needed to keep pace with growth. The dining hall and a cellhouse were both designed by inmates, who were later pardoned for their efforts. In addition, convict labor was used to construct several buildings on the site, including a cellhouse, administration building, commissary, and a trusty dorm.
One drawback to this plan, says Wollheim, was that the prisoners knew where all the tunnels were, such as a popular escape route leading from the dining hall to the heating plant. “Escape was a regular occurrence,” he says.
Eventually the prison was professionalized — architects were hired to design the buildings and a more staid, bureaucratic theme emerged. A sally port was added to accommodate automobiles and an administrative processing gate was built.
But even as new buildings were added, the original structures continued to decay. Over the years this added to a growing prisoner unrest, rioting, fires and other forms of revolt. But although the once grand “castle” was nearing the end of its usefulness as a prison, it would never totally relinquish its role in the myth of the Old West.
For many, territorial prisons represent the romance of the “rugged individualist living outside the boundaries of the law,” says Wollheim. Although he argues that in reality, prison architecture reflects different social trends in dealing with lawbreakers— in essence, by bringing the anarchistic element under control, they marked the actual end of the West and that rugged individualism — the Old Pen still stands as a romanticized symbol of a bigger, freer past.
Wollheim’s photos were displayed in Cellhouse 4 for a year or two, and then taken to Department of Correction headquarters.
See "A Place of Confinement: Constructing the Old Penitentiary 1872–1973," Peter Wollheim, essay.
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