The Pennsylvania Prison Society is an advocacy group that supports prisoners

Prisoner support

Prisoner support encompasses a variety of activities aimed a providing assistance to prisoners, particularly political prisoners. Many programs devoted to this purpose have quite limited resources; for instance, Nottingham Black Prisoner Support, with one staff worker, had 297 active cases in 1999...

, formerly incarcerated individuals and their families. It is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

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It was founded in 1787 as the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, a name which it retained for 100 years. Among its founders were Dr. Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Rush was a Founding Father of the United States. Rush lived in the state of Pennsylvania and was a physician, writer, educator, humanitarian and a Christian Universalist, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania....

, John Swanwick

John Swanwick

John Swanwick was a United States Representative from Pennsylvania.Born in England, Swanwick and his family arrived in the American colonies in the early 1770s. He engaged in mercantile pursuits in Philadelphia under Robert Morris, and was also interested in literature, having published a volume...

, John Morrison, Thomas Morrison, Tench Coxe

Tench Coxe

Tench Coxe was an American political economist and a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1788-1789. He wrote under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian".-Biography:...

, Zachariah Poulson

Zachariah Poulson

Zachariah Poulson was an American editor and publisher.Poulson was born in Philadelphia in 1761. In 1800, he purchased Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser, the successor to America's first daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet. He was state printer for some years, and the publisher of...

, Thomas Lloyd

Thomas Lloyd (stenographer)

Thomas Lloyd , known as the “Father of American Shorthand,” was born in London on August 14 to William and Hannah Biddle Lloyd. Lloyd studied at the College of St. Omer in Flanders, where he first learned his method of shorthand...

, Joseph Moore, William Roger, John Haighn, James Whitehall, Richard Wells, Thomas Wistar, Jacob Shoemaker, Isaac Parrish

Isaac Parrish

Isaac Parrish was a U.S. Representative from Ohio.Born near St. Clairsville, Belmont County, Ohio, in March 1804, Parrish resided in Cambridge, Guernsey County, Ohio.He studied law.He was admitted to the bar and practiced....

, William Lane, Thomas Rogers, Samuel Griffiths, Francis Baily, Joseph James, Charles Marshall, John Olden, Caleb Lownes, Thomas Parkinson

Thomas Parkinson

Thomas F. Parkinson Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, was a poet in his own right; an expert on the poetry of W. B. Yeats; and one of the first academic authorities to write about the Beat poets and novelists of San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s...

, John Morris, John Baker, Dr. George Duffield, James Reynolds, Benjamin Wynkoop, George Krebs, Dr. William White

William White (Bishop of Pennsylvania)

The Most Reverend William White was the first and fourth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, USA , the first Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania , and the second United States Senate Chaplain...

, Dr. Henry Helmuth, Dr. John Jones, Dr. William Shippen, Dr. Gerardus Clarkson, Jonathan Penrose, and Lawrence Sickle.

In 1845, the Prison Society established the Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy, which is still published today as The Prison Journal.

The Society's main office is located at 245 North Broad Street

Broad Street (Philadelphia)

Broad Street is a major arterial street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is nearly 13 miles long.It is Pennsylvania Route 611 along its entire length with the exception of its northernmost part between Old York Road and Pennsylvania Route 309 and the southernmost part south of Interstate 95...

 Suite 300, Philadelphia

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

 Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 19107-1518. In addition, there are 43 chapters of the Pennsylvania Prison Society running Official Visitor programs throughout the state.

External links

• Official website
• The Pennsylvania Prison Society Records, including correspondence and minutes from 1787 to 1966, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
  Historical Society of Pennsylvania
  The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a historical society founded in 1824 and based in Philadelphia. The Society's building, designed by Addison Hutton and listed on Philadelphia's Register of Historical Places, houses some 600,000 printed items and over 19 million manuscript and graphic items...
  
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