The story of incarceration in Newark is as old as the city itself. For more than 300 years punishment has been dealt to the people of Newark within the same one mile radius of land, extending out from the famous intersection of Broad and Market streets—the same intersection laid out by settling Puritans in 1666. From its earliest days, the building of jails and courthouses into the city’s landscape integrated the burdens of the prisoner, criminal justice and the community.
In colonial times, Newark was a calm homogeneous farming community run by Puritans with a vision that they were settling in the biblical Promised Land. These Puritans were led, from Connecticut, by their leader Robert Treat to the “Four Corners” (the intersection of Broad and Market streets), which they bought from the Lenape/Hackensack Indians for gunpowder, lead, axes, coats, guns, pistols, swords, kettles, blankets, knives, beer and breeches—all valued at $750.
It wasn’t long before the small town of Newark, with its New England roots, became an attractive outpost full of finely built stores and mansions. Its inhabitants were rich, poverty was unknown, and the newly arrived transplants from New England felt right at home in their orderly, homogeneous, clean town with its own quaint green and cozy town commons. An outsider would have been impressed, but the arrival of the outsider, along with the forces of a rapidly changing America, would ultimately shatter this utopian setting.
The Newark settlers were strict Puritans, and their law rested with God and the community. In colonial Newark, order was guaranteed through group relationships and the force of public opinion. As long as the original, close-knit founding community existed, there was no reason for any jail structures to be built.
People who acted in ways not accepted by the community were ostracized, forced to leave or publicly embarrassed. Puritan society was closely bound by ties of kinship, race, language and religion, enabling members of the community to effectively enforce standards of acceptable public behavior with the simple threats of shame and banishment. It was only when outsiders began to arrive, or when the ideologies that governed the city changed from being strictly religious in aim to increasingly secular and capitalistic, that the old forms of control began to fail.
It didn’t take long before the growing population of the city, the arrival of scores of outsiders and a movement away from its founding ideologies necessitated building jails. It appears that the outsiders moving into the settlement disrupted the old order, traditionally maintained by a culturally close-knit group of people, and caused this order to fail. The old order was shaken forever, and Newark would never be the same.
Newark began to deal with its “outsider” problem right away and erected its first jail as early as 1686. There is scant documentation about this first jail in Newark, which was most likely a crude wooden structure located on Broad Street near the first church built by the founding Puritans. A more permanent jail building went up in 1700 just south of this first jail. This jail too was a small communal structure but was an improvement over the first because of its solid, and more permanent, brick structure. Also, its upper floors were used as the courtroom—the seat of justice. This architectural placement of the jail underneath the courts emphasized to the public that the seat of justice was a seat of power and threat.
In 1708, the second jail was replaced by a stone structure located near the site of Old First Church near present-day Branford Place. And, 102 years later, the 1708 jail was replaced by a new complex—a brick house located near the former City Hall. The last of these early jails burnt down in 1835, which brought about the construction of the Newark Street Jail.
During the stretch of years that was characterized by the building of these first jails, the country and Newark were going through their most profound changes. The change of status from colony to independent country was brought about by the Revolutionary War. Before and after the war, the question of public execution was a hotly debated topic in all the cities of America. And, until the Newark Street Jail was built, all executions were outdoor spectacles.
Michel Foucault, one of the most famous and well-known theorists on punishment and incarceration, examined the transformation of executions from a public, community-based outdoor spectacle to a private, elite-affiliated indoor affair. His theory—that the spectacle of outdoor executions was a ritual that reaffirmed a monarchy’s or community’s social cohesiveness—used to prove itself on Newark’s streets.
In one example, there is a record of a 19th-century minister, Uzdal Ogden, of the New Presbyterian Church in Newark, who summed up the intent of capital punishment as being performed in the name of God and for the benefit of social cohesiveness. By taking part in the public spectacle of the accused’s execution, the community was simultaneously washing itself from any responsibility and acting together to reinforce community norms, expectations and practices.
Those who were executed in Newark were usually outsiders. They were easier to convict than people from within the close-knit community: Executing an outsider brought the community together while taking someone from within would risk pulling apart its tight-knit and interreliant structure. As a result of this unfair targeting, Newark became an outsider city only capable of existing off its established community. This was disastrous because it became an outsider city at exactly the same time that embracing the outside world was becoming increasingly important.
Newark and the country executed those on the fringes of society, like slaves and Revolutionary soldiers, in hopes that the actual act of public execution would help enforce social solidarity. Despite all the efforts by government, religious representatives and executioners to maintain a homogeneous society, they all failed. No one could stop Newark, like the rest of the country, from becoming a melting pot.
Changes in the surrounding world not only changed the demographics in Newark but also created a population and industry explosion. As a result, the infrastructure of Newark needed to be constantly reinvented. But the city moved too slowly with disastrous results. Industrialization and immigration skyrocketed, causing rapid unplanned growth and putting stresses on the environment that city leaders of the time were not capable of dealing with.
During this period Newark had a weak government, plagued by partisan politics and petty haggling, that was ill-suited to get anything done. Then, too, the rampant individualism of the day made Newarkers suspicious of the increased government powers and forestalled any thought of comprehensive urban planning.
Disease, overcrowding and abysmal sanitation characterized the whole of Newark. How could Newark, a city that could not fulfill its most basic responsibilities to its citizens, deal with justice, crime and punishment? The answer is it couldn’t. What resulted was a focus on incarcerating criminals, removing them from society rather than rehabilitating them. Treatment of prisoners was a low priority so repeat offenders were common.
In a nutshell, the city government’s neglect and lack of responsibility aided in the rising crime rates experienced in the city. The snowball effect hasn’t stopped since then. And the history of the Norfolk Street Jail illustrates the rich history of this decline through the 19th century.
Seth Mann is the program coordinator of the Honors College at Rutgers-Newark. Posted August 2005.
