<P> Common wisdom in the England of the 1500s attributed property crime to idleness . "Idleness" had been a status crime since Parliament enacted the Statute of Laborers in the mid-fourteenth century . By 1530, English subjects convicted of leading a "Rogishe or Vagabonds Trade or Lyfe" were subject to whipping and mutilation, and recidivists could face the death penalty . </P> <P> In 1557, many in England perceived that vagrancy was on the rise . That same year, the City of London reopened the Bridewell as a warehouse for vagrants arrested within the city limits . By order of any two of the Bridewell's governors, a person could be committed to the prison for a term of custody ranging from several weeks to several years . In the decades that followed, "houses of correction" or "workhouses" like the Bridewell became a fixture of towns across England--a change made permanent when Parliament began requiring every county in the realm to build a workhouse in 1576 . </P> <P> The workhouse was not just a custodial institution . At least some of its proponents hoped that the experience of incarceration would rehabilitate workhouse residents through hard labor . Supporters expressed the belief that forced abstinence from "idleness" would make vagrants into productive citizens . Other supporters argued that the threat of the workhouse would deter vagrancy, and that inmate labor could provide a means of support for the workhouse itself . Governance of these institutions was controlled by written regulations promulgated by local authorities, and local justices of the peace monitored compliance . </P> <P> Although "vagrants" were the first inhabitants of the workhouse--not felons or other criminals--expansion of its use to criminals was discussed . Sir Thomas More described in Utopia (1516) how an ideal government should punish citizens with slavery, not death, and expressly recommended use of penal enslavement in England . Thomas Starkey, chaplain to Henry VIII, suggested that convicted felons "be put in some commyn work...so by theyr life yet the commyn welth schold take some profit ." Edward Hext, justice of the peace in Somersetshire in the 1500s, recommended that criminals be put to labor in the workhouse after receiving the traditional punishments of the day . </P>

Who operated in the first prison facilities in the west prior to individual statehood