9. Prisons and jails did not usually serve as punishment for crimes in the 18th and early 19th centuries
In Great Britain and its North American colonies, prison sentences were not viewed as punishment for or deterrents for crimes. Far more effective punishments, such as the stocks for disorderly conduct, branding for thieves of lesser amounts, whippings, and other such activities were viewed as suitable punishments. The list of capital crimes in Great Britain was long and executions commonplace. Jails and prisons were viewed as necessary for housing the accused prior to trial, and for housing the indebted for non-payment of their debts. Relatively few prisoners convicted served a specified time of sentence incarcerated.
Some of the earliest public buildings in the English colonies in North America were jails, deemed necessities along the same lines as in Britain. Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony built the Old Jail in Barnstable in 1690. It housed debtors, as well as numerous notorious criminals and their consorts for over a century. Within a few years of the turn of the 18th century, every established county in colonial America had access to a jail. Usually, the jailer or sheriff lived on the premises or next door, and the authorities held court nearby. Imprisonment for debt in America followed the British model, and the ancestors of many-storied American surnames spent time in prisons for indebtedness.