Crownsville’s records suggest that, while the story is nowhere near as simple as one institution morphing into the other, it is no coincidence that the end of the twentieth century marks both the decline of the mental hospital and the expansion of the prison system. And so in trying to better understand what happened to America in this period, Crownsville urges us to start the story of mass incarceration a little earlier—at a time when the prison and the asylum coexisted.
