Sintsincks to Sing Sing: Empire, the War of 1812, and the Transformation of U.S. Prisons

abstract:In the 1820s, incarcerated workers constructed Sing Sing Prison between the Hudson River and a limestone quarry. The prison’s name evoked the site’s legacy of conquest and colonization, while the War of 1812 served as a catalyst for large prisons like Sing Sing where confinement would be shaped by labor, violence, and coercion. During the war, both the British and the United States held captives in large prison complexes in North America and England. Initially envisioned as humane alternatives to earlier prison ships, British and U.S. military prisons soon became sites of intimidation and violence. Soon after, the cultural memory of the war helped reshape the meaning and experience of incarceration at Sing Sing. This led prison advocates, including veterans of the war, to reject the religious idealism of earlier prison advocates without rejecting prisons altogether.