“Degenerate Criminals”

• Author: Peter Scharff Smith
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854808318782
• Published date: 01 August 2008
• Date: 01 August 2008
• Subject Matter: Articles

1048

“DEGENERATE CRIMINALS”

Mental Health and Psychiatric Studies of Danish

Prisoners in Solitary Confinement, 1870–1920

PETER SCHARFF SMITH

Danish Institute for Human Rights

Inspired by the breakthrough of the discipline of criminology and biological theories of degeneration, prison psychiatry became

a flourishing field during the latter decades of the 19th century. This is reflected in the history of the Vridsløselille penitentiary

in Denmark, which operated as a Pennsylvania-model institution with strict solitary confinement from 1859 to the early 1930s.

Throughout the period, this prison experienced extensive problems with inmate mental health, and as the discipline of psychi-

atry developed, mental disorders were given new names and old diseases disappeared. Although prison authorities were will-

ing to acknowledge the damaging effects of the isolation regimes being employed, a number of psychiatrists located the causes

of mental disorders among biological dispositional traits rather than situational factors. In doing so, they downplayed the power

of the prison context and offered biological “degeneration” among criminals as an alternative explanation.

Keywords: solitary confinement; isolation; Danish prisons; biological factors in criminality

The Vridsløselille penitentiary in Denmark opened in 1859 and operated as a

Pennsylvania-model institution with strict solitary confinement through the early 1930s.

Throughout the period, this prison experienced extensive problems with inmate mental

health. Prisoners were diagnosed with different illnesses, and as the discipline of psychiatry

developed, mental disorders were given new names, and old diseases disappeared. During

the 1860s, many inmates suffered from “lethargy,” whereas “neurological complaints”

became a big problem in the 1880s. During the early 20th century, these disorders were

replaced by, for example, “neuralgia” and “hysteria.” By looking at the records of prison

doctors and the official statistics of the prison service, and by consulting detailed psychiatric

studies of the mental health problems in Vridsløselille penitentiary and other Danish prisons

from the 1870s to around 1920, it is possible to describe how the prison authorities and psy-

chiatric experts perceived “disturbed offenders,” their mental health, and criminal behaviour.

THE PENNSYLVANIA MODEL INTERNATIONALLY AND IN DENMARK

From the 1770s to the middle of the 19th century, the ideology of the modern peniten-

tiary became established. With the construction of the so-called Auburn and Pennsylvania

prison models in the 1820s, the aim of this modern penitentiary system became the reha-

bilitation of criminals through the use of isolation. The Auburn system (developed in the

Auburn prison in New York State) permitted the inmates to work together during the day,

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 35 No. 8,August 2008 1048-1064

DOI: 10.1177/0093854808318782

© 2008 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

but under a regime of total silence. In Pennsylvania-model institutions (finally developed

in Philadelphia in the “Cherry Hill” prison), there was no compromise with the ideal of iso-

lation, and the prisoners spent almost all their time in their cells, where they worked and

slept. Here, inmates were supposed to turn their thoughts inward, to meet God, to repent of

their crimes, and eventually to return to society as morally cleansed Christian citizens

(Smith, 2004b, 2006b; also see Foucault, 1995; Ignatieff, 1978).

The ideology of the modern penitentiary had an enormous impact all over the Western

world. In the United States, the Auburn model became the most popular, but a number of

Pennsylvania-model prisons were also constructed. In Europe, on the other hand, the

Pennsylvania system, the most severe form of isolation, was favoured. In Denmark, solitary

confinement was implemented on a large scale from 1859, when Vridsløselille Penitentiary

opened based on the Pennsylvania system. During the early 1860s, however, it became

apparent that serious health problems had arisen in the prison. It quickly became normal pro-

cedure, for example, to transfer a number of the worst inmates (who became more or less

uncontrollable) to insane asylums in different parts of the country, and the prison authorities

fought a constant battle to avoid a general state of mental health chaos (Smith, 2004a). In

fact, mental health problems seemed to arise in all Pennsylvania-model prisons, where the

isolation was enforced much more strictly (Franke, 1992, p. 128; Smith, 2006b).

THE EXPERIENCE OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

Before we turn to a detailed account of the mental health situation in Vridsløselille and

the way it was interpreted by professional psychiatrists, we should allow ourselves a view

from the inside and from below. I therefore give voice to a prisoner who experienced the

Pennsylvania model regime at Vridsløselille during 1918 and 1919, when it was still being

conducted according to the original plan. In terms of the actual regime, the experience of

solitary confinement in Vridsløselille was very similar—indeed, almost identical—in the

1860s and in the late 1910s.

Niels Johnsen began serving his 8-month sentence in Vridsløselille in 1918. Technically,

he had received a sentence of 1 year’s imprisonment, but when sentences were served in

solitary confinement, they were always shortened, a reminder of the official acknowledge-

ment of the hardships associated with such a regime. Johnsen was convicted of writing

political articles, which, according to the court, were revolutionary in nature. Johnsen was,

in other words, an able writer and as such a relatively unusual guest in the prison system.

Luckily, he later produced a brief written recollection of his prison experience, on which

the following is based (Johnsen, 1929).

According to Johnsen, an ordinary day at Vridsløselille began at 6:00 in the morning and

consisted of solitary work in one’s cell until 7:30 in the evening. Carving toy horses became

Johnsen’s occupation. There were three daily breaks for eating—2 hours in all—which also

took place in the cell. Half an hour of fresh air (if the weather permitted) was also allowed

each inmate, but time in the yard also took the form of solitary confinement. The prisoner’s

mask, worn while being moved around the prison, was also still in operation in 1918. Nor

did the occasional visits to both the prison church and the prison school allow inmates any

social contact (unless the regulations were broken). In Johnsen’s time the church and school

were still designed panoptically, with isolation booths for each inmate visitor. Visits and

Smith / PSYCHIATRIC STUDIES OF DANISH PRISONERS 1049