CA 3

Pioneers in Correctional
Reform
 William Penn
William Penn (1614-1718), fought for
religious freedom and individual rights. He
was the first leader to prescribe imprisonment
as correctional treatment for major offenders.
He also fought for the abolition of death
penalty and torture as a form of punishment.
 Penitentiary
 an institution intended
to isolate prisoners from
society and from one
another so that they
could reflect on their
past misdeeds, repent,
and thus undergo
reformation
 Principles of a Penitentiary
isolate prisoner from bad influences of society -
liquor, temptation, people
penance & silent contemplation
productive labor
reform (thinking & work habits)
return to society, renewed
key = solitary confinement
isolate from contagion
foster quiet reflection
punishment, since man is social animal
cheap  shorter sentence, fewer guards
 Benjamin Rush
 Benjamin Rush (1745–1813)
Physician, patriot, signer of the
Declaration of Independence, and
social reformer, Rush advocated the
penitentiary as replacement for capital
and corporal punishment.
 Charles Montesiquieu
Charles Montesiquieu (Charles Louis Secondat, Baron de la
Brede et de Montesiquieu) - (1689- 1755) A French historian and
philosopher who analyzed law as an expression of justice.
 He believed that harsh punishment would undermine morality
and that appealing to moral sentiments was the better means of
preventing crime.
famous for his advocacy in reforming slavery as a means of
punishment.
He was famous for the theory “separation of powers” of the
legislative, judiciary and the executive.
John Locke
 Founder of the School of Empiricism
 Empirical evidence rather than
speculation
 Tabula rasa- empty state
 Man is born good, independent and equal
Francois Marie Arouet (Pen name:
Voltaire) (1694- 1778) He was the most
versatile of all philosophers during this
period. He believed that fear of shame was a
deterrent to crime. He fought the legality-
sanctioned practice of torture.
 Cesare Beccaria
 Cesare Bonesa, Marchese de Beccaria
(1738-1794) - He wrote the essay “An
Essay on Crimes and Punishment”, the
most exiting essay on law during his
time as it presented the humanistic
goals of law.
 Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) – the greatest leader in
the reform of English Criminal law. He believed that
whatever punishment designed to negate whatever
pleasure or gain the criminal derives from crime the
crime rate would go down. He was also famous for the
PANOPTICAN prison design – a prison that consists
of a large circular building containing multi cells
around the periphery.
John Howard (1726 – 1790) – the sheriff of
Bedsfordshire in 1773 who devoted his life and fortune to
prison reform. After his findings on English Prisons, he
recommended that
single cells for sleeping,
segregation of women,
segregation of youth,
provision of sanitation facilities,
abolition of fee system
Sir Samuel Romilly (1757- 1818)
A follower of Bentham, was an able lawyer and the
most effective leader in direct and persistent agitation
for reform of the English criminal code. He pressed
for construction of the first modern English prison,
Millbank, in 1816. His prison idea was taken up by
Romilly’s followers, Sir James Mackintosh (1765-
1832) and Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786- 1845).
 Manuel Montesimos, who was the Director of the
prisons of Valencia, Spain, in 1835, divided
prisoners into companies and appointed prisoners
as petty officers in charge. Academic classes of
one hour a day were given all inmates under 20
years of age.
 Capt. Alexander Maconochie, the Superintendent of a penal
colony at Norfolk Island in Australia who introduced a
progressive humane system to substitute for corporal
punishment. When a prisoner earned a required number of
marks, he was given his ticket of leave, which is the equivalent
of parole
 He introduced fair disciplinary trials, built churches,
distributed books, allowed plays to be staged, and permitted
prisoners to tend small gardens.
 The first thing that Alexander Maconochie did
was to eliminate the flat sentence, a system
that had allowed no hope of release until the
full time had been served. Then he developed a
MARK SYSTEM- whereby a convict could
earn freedom by hard work and good behavior.
This put the burden of release on the convict.
As Maconochie said, “when a man keeps the
key of his own prison, he is soon persuaded to
fit it into the lock”
 The system had five principles:
 Release should not be based on the completing of a sentence
for a set period of time, but on the completion of a determined
and specified quantity of labor. In brief, time sentences should
be abolished, and tasked sentences substituted.
 The quantity of labor a prisoner must perform should be
expressed in a number of “marks” which he must earn, by
improvement of conduct, frugality of living, and habits of
industry, before he can be released.
 While in prison he should earn everything he recieves. All
sustenance and indulgences should be added to his debt of
marks.
 When qualified by discipline to do so, he should work in
asociation with a small number of other prisoners, forming a group
of six or seven, and the whole group should be answerable for the
conduct and labor of each member.
 In the final stage, a prisoner, while still obliged to earn his daily
tally of marks, should be given a propriety interest in his own labor
and be subjected to a less rigorous discipline, to prepare him for
release into society.
But sad to say the fact that Maconochie’s visionary toward
rehabilitation were not appreciated or supported by the
unenlightened bureaucrats above him. His results thus were
disclaimed, and the colony fell back into its former brutalized
routine almost as he left it.
 Sir Walter Crofton, Chairman of the
Directors of Irish prisons. In 1856,
Crofton introduced the “Irish system”,
later on called the progressive stage
system.
 SIR WALTER CROFTON of Ireland- used that concept in
developing what he called the “indeterminate system”, which
came to be known as the “IRISH SYSTEM”. He reasoned that if
penitentiaries are places where offenders think about their crimes
and can decide to stop their criminal misbehavior (“repent”), then
there must be a mechanism to determine that this decision has in
fact been made, as well as a mechanism for getting the inmate out
when penitence has been done. The indeterminate sentence was
believed to be the best mechanism.
Crofton devised a series of stages, each bringing the convict closer to the
free society;

 The first stage was composed of solitary confinement and

monotonous of work.
 The second stage was assignment to public works and a
progression through various grades, each grade shortening the
length of stay.
 The last stage was assignment to an indeterminate prison where
the prisoner worked without supervision and moved in and out of
the free country. If the prisoner’s conduct continued to be good
and if he or she were able to find employment , then the offender
returned to the community on a conditional pardon or “ticket to
leave”.
 Ticket to leave
 Ticket to leave- This ticket could be revoked
at any time within the span of the original
fixed sentence if the prisoner’s conduct was
not up to standards established by those who
supervised the conditional pardon.
 Crofton’s plan was the first effort to establish a
system of conditional liberty in the community,
the system we know today as Parole.
Frédéric-Auguste Demetz was famous for the
establishment of agricultural colony for delinquent
boys in France in 1839. The boys were housed in
cottages with house fathers as in charge. The
system was based on reeducation rather than force.
When discharge the boys were place under the
supervision of a patron.
 Zebulon R. Brockway, in 1876, the New York
State Reformatory at Elmira opened with Z. R.
Brockway as superintendent. Brockway
introduced in Elmira a new institutional
program for boys from 16 to 30 years of age.
 Contribution of Brockway
 The new prisoner was classified as second grade and was
promoted to first grade after six months of good behavior.
Another six months of good behavior in the first grade
qualified him for parole. If the prisoner committed a
missed conduct he was demoted to third grade where he
was required to show good conduct for one month before
he could be reclassified to second grade.
 Sir Evelyn Ruggles Brise, was a Director of
English prisons, after visiting Elmira in 1897,
opened the Borstal Institution near Rochedi, in
Kent. The Borstal Institutions of England became
the earliest best reform institutions for young
offenders.
Elam Lynds
warden of the Auburn and later of Sing Sing (which he
built), was one of the most influential persons in the
development of early prison discipline in America. He is
described as having been a strict disciplinarian who
believe that all convicts were cowards who could not be
reformed until their spirit was broken. To this end he
devised a system of brutal punishments and degrading
procedures, many of which remained as accepted practice
until very recent times.
 The imposition of silence was seen as the most
important part of the discipline program. The
rule of absolute silence and noncommunication
was maitained and enforce by the immediate
use of the lash for the slightest infraction.
 Flogging was advocated by Lynds as the most
effective way to maintain order. He sometimes
used a “cat” made of wires strands.
 The methods used to prevent conversation or
communication during after meals were also
humiliating, prisoners were required to sit face-
to-back. They were given their meager and
usually bland and unsavory, meal to eat in
silence. If they wanted more food, they would
raise one hand; if they had too much they raised
the other. Any infraction of the rule of silence
resulted in a flogging and the loss of a meal.
 Prison Stripes
A development of the various forms of attire to degrade and
identify prisoners. Wide alternating black-and-white horizontal
bonds were placed on the loose-fitting heavy cotton garments.
Stripes were still in use in the South as late as the 1940’s and
1950’s. They have been generally replaced in most security
prisons by blue denims or whites.
 Early prisoners were allowed to wear the same clothing as the
free society did.
 Auburn and Sing Sing prisons different colors were used for
the first time offenders and for repeaters
 The famous “prisons stripes” came into being during the year
1815 in New York.
 Lockstep
 Prisoners were required to line up in close formation with their
hands on the shoulders or under the arms of the prisoner in
front. The line moved rapidly toward its destination as the
prisoners shuffled their feet in unison without lifting them from
the ground. Because this non-stop shuffle was “encouraged” by
the use of the lash, any prisoner who fell out of lockstep risked
a broken ankle or other serious injury from the steadily
objectionable and was punished viciously. The methods used to
prevent conversation or communication during after meals
were also humiliating, prisoners were required to sit face-to-
back. They were given their meager and usually bland and
unsavory, meal to eat in silence.
Lockstep
 Ellen Cheney Johnson
founded the New England Women's Auxiliary Association to
the United States Sanitary Commission, worked with
homeless and vagrant women after the Civil War through the
Dedham Asylum for Discharged Female Prisoners, and
served as superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory
Prison for Women at Framingham.
Pushed for the establishment of an all women's prison in
1877
 Sanford Bates (1884- 1972)
a legendary figure in American corrections, was president of the American
Correctional Association in 1926. He became the first superintendent of
federal prisons in 1929 and the first director of the United States Bureau of
Prisons in 1930. In 1937 he became the executive director of the Boys’
Clubs of America. Later he served as commissioner of the New York State
Board of Parole and Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of
Institutions and Agencies. He was also an active consultant and writer.
Sanford Bates introduced procedures into the U.S Bureau of Prison in
1934.
 This U.S Bureau of Prisons gradually emerged as the national
leader in corrections, introducing many new concepts that have
been copied by states system.
 Two major contributions were diagnosis and classification and
the use of proffessional personnel such as psychiatrists and
psychologists to help rehabilitate inmates.
 The federal system also led the way to more humane treatment
and better living conditions.
 Olin Guy Blackwell
Olin Guy Blackwell (February 15, 1915 – March 7,
1986) was the fourth and final warden of Alcatraz Federal
Penitentiary, which was situated on Alcatraz
Island, California, US. Associate Warden to Paul J.
Madigan from April 1959, Blackwell served as warden of
Alcatraz at its most difficult time from 1961 to 1963 when
it was facing closure as a decaying prison and financing
problems and at the time of the infamous June 1962
escape from Alcatraz.
 Fred Wilkinson
Director of the Department of Corrections.
A man with many years of experience in the federal prison system,
Wilkinson had also been instrumental in closing Alcatraz Prison, and had
masterminded the trade of Russian spy Rudolf Abel for downed U-2 pilot
Francis Gary Powers in Germany in 1962.
Wilkinson quickly became known as Friendly Fred around the
penitentiary because of his easy, open manner around the inmates. He
was often seen on weekends walking his pet bulldog inside the prison
yard.
Thank you!