Pierce, Robert F.

An Act to Establish a State Penitentiary was passed in 1848 by the Second Legislature. The act established the penitentiary's governing body as a three member Board of Directors appointed by the Governor with the approval of the Senate. The prison system began as a single institution, located in Huntsville, known as the Huntsville Penitentiary. In the 1870s, the Board established a system of camps that were located outside the walls of the penitentiary. In addition to the use of convicts in and around the prison, the convicts were hired out to large labor employers, mainly plantation owners and railroad companies. Another penitentiary was opened in Rusk in January 1883.

In 1881, the Legislature reorganized the prison system, abolishing the Board of Directors, creating in its place a Penitentiary Board. This board was succeeded by the Board of Prison Commissioners in 1910. The Texas Prison Board replaced the Board of Prison Commissioners in 1927. The Texas Prison System (governed by the Texas Prison Board) became the Department of Corrections (governed by the Board of Corrections) in 1957. Then, in 1989, the Department of Criminal Justice, governed by the Board of Criminal Justice, was created.

In 1924, the state began housing inmates scheduled to die in an area known as death row. The electric chair was used by the prison system as the form of execution from 1924 to 1972. In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled capital punishment to be cruel and unusual punishment, and those prisoners in Texas remaining on death row had their sentences commuted to life in prison. In 1974, executions once again became legal. The State of Texas adopted death by lethal injection as the new method of execution in 1977. The first use of lethal injection for an execution was in December 1982. This method is still in use today by the prison system for execution of death row inmates. (Vernon's Ann. Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 43.14)

The materials in this collection were gathered together by Dr. Robert P. Pierce, a historian and teacher from Huntsville, Texas, who also served as the volunteer caretaker of a repository of prison related materials known as the Texas Prison Archives.