<P> Other rationalists, like Jeremy Bentham, believed that deterrence alone could not end criminality and looked instead to the social environment as the ultimate source of crime . Bentham's conception of criminality led him to concur with philanthropist reformers on the need for rehabilitation of offenders . But, unlike the philanthropists, Bentham and like - minded rationalists believed the true goal of rehabilitation was to show convicts the logical "inexpedience" of crime, not their estrangement from religion . For these rationalists, society was the source of and the solution to crime . </P> <P> Ultimately, hard labor became the preferred rationalist therapy . Bentham eventually adopted this approach, and his well - known 1791 design for the Panopticon prison called for inmates to labor in solitary cells for the course of their imprisonment . Another rationalist, William Eden, collaborated with John Howard and Justice William Blackstone in drafting the Penitentiary Act of 1779, which called for a penal regime of hard labor . </P> <P> According to social and legal historian Adam J. Hirsch, the rationalists had only a secondary impact on United States penal practices . But their ideas--whether consciously adopted by United States prison reformers or not--resonate in various United States penal initiatives to the present day . </P> <P> Although convicts played a significant role in British settlement of North America, according to legal historian Adam J. Hirsch "(t) he wholesale incarceration of criminals is in truth a comparatively recent episode in the history of Anglo - American jurisprudence ." Imprisonment facilities were present from the earliest English settlement of North America, but the fundamental purpose of these facilities changed in the early years of United States legal history as a result of a geographically widespread "penitentiary" movement . The form and function of prison systems in the United States has continued to change as a result of political and scientific developments, as well as notable reform movements during the Jacksonian Era, Reconstruction Era, Progressive Era, and the 1970s . But the status of penal incarceration as the primary mechanism for criminal punishment has remained the same since its first emergence in the wake of the American Revolution . </P>

Which of the following is true concerning the history of american correctional institutions