Social control and imprisonment during the American revolution: Newgate of Connecticut

During the period immediately before the American Revolution, Connecticut colonists became increasingly concerned with citizens who retained sympathies for the British Crown. The possession of such sympathies by Loyalists became the occasion for escalating informal and formal efforts to contain this newly troubling form of deviance. This paper details briefly the origins of the fractionalization of Connecticut society into patriot and loyalist factions and then presents a case study of the use of Newgate Prison of Connecticut as a tool for the suppression of such deviance. Newgate Prison, it may be argued, was the first true colonial prison for the long-term punishment of serious offenders. Although the prison was designed for conventional offenders, the war transformed the mission of the facility so that it confined common and political offenders simultaneously in a nonsegregated institutional environment. The wartime experience of the prison is described, the use of incarceration in Newgate is considered in the context of the larger strategy adopted to control Tory activity during the war, and the significance of Newgate's wartime experience is examined.