Jessie Donaldson Hodder (1867-1931) was a pioneering reformer in the areas of child welfare, medical social service, and criminal justice. She is best known for her innovative contributions to the welfare of incarcerated girls and women as superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women (1911-1931). Written by Laura J. Praglin, Ph.D., LMSW.
Continue Reading »An interview with Paul W. Keve published in Executive Intelligence Review (1994). He was interviewed by Marianna Wertz. Keve is a leading authority on corrections administration. He retired in 1993 from the Virginia Commonwealth University, where he taught corrections administration, and before that worked in every area of corrections administration, from probation and parole, to prisons and juvenile institutions.
Continue Reading »Paul Willard Keve was a pioneer in the field of criminal justice, particularly regarding a professional focus on the management and administration of correctional programs and as a professional writer on criminal justice issues.
Continue Reading »“Reformation as an End in Prison Discipline: Report of The Standing Committee,” by F. H. Wines, Chairman. ,A presentation at the Fifteenth Annual Session of The National Conference Of Charities And Correction, 1888. “We assert, therefore, that there can be no recognition of reformation as an end in prison discipline in any prison where the warden or superintendent is not, by his education, habits of thought, personal character, and conviction of duty, qualified to administer to convicts the moral treatment which they require.”
Continue Reading »Presentations and reports of standing committees at the annual meetings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction during the late 19th century reveal that social welfare leaders and progressives were actively involved in efforts to reform the nation’s criminal justice system.
Continue Reading »By F. H. Wines, LL. D., Chairman of Committee on Treatment of Criminals. “The subject assigned to this committee is the treatment of the criminal, a subordinate phase of the larger problem of the treatment of crime. The criminal is the concrete embodiment of the abstract conception of crime. Crime is an act, while the criminal is the agent of the act; but there can be no act without an actor, and it is through the criminal that the law strikes at crime, which it is the aim of the law to prevent or to suppress, caring little for the criminal actor, but much for the victim of his deed.”
Continue Reading »Prison Discipline In General: The Elmira System – A letter From Z. B. Brockway of Elmira, N.Y., To F. B. Sanborn of Concord, Mass. Presented at the Fifth Annual Conference of Charities, 1878. “Labor for prisoners lies at the very foundation of their reformation; and I hope to see, before I die, the great army of idle prisoners, congregated in the common jails of our land, brought together in workhouses, where they shall be wisely and profitably employed, and held in such custody as shall protect society from their crimes, or the burden of their support as paupers, — held until they give evidence to experts of cure or reformation.”
Continue Reading »“The Prison Question: Progress Over Twenty Years, 1873-93,” by General R. Brinkerhoff, Chairman, Committee on the History of Prisons. “In a resume of progress for twenty years in so large a country as the United States, of course only a brief outline…”
Continue Reading »Presentation given by S. Sheldon Glueck, Instructor, Criminology and Penology, Department of Social Ethics, Harvard University, at the Proceedings Of The National Conference Of Social Work Fifty-First Annual Session, 1924. “These conditions make it clear that we must first deal with the traditional need for definite, legislative prescriptions in advance, of the length of service attached to each offense, so that the power to deprive of liberty may not be abused; and secondly, we have to deal with the associated problem of lack of co-ordination of effort between the courts, the penal institutions, the parole officers, and social agencies and workers.”
Continue Reading »Presentation by J. E. Hagerty, Dean, College of Commerce and Journalism, Ohio State University, at The National Conference Of Social Work Fifty-First Annual Session, 1924. “I am not in sympathy with the notion that the immigrant should forget and lose the language and the customs and traditions of the country from which he came…The foreigner, however, should learn the language of the country and the laws of the country. Much of the immigrant’s crime has been committed through ignorance, from the lack of knowledge of what he can do and what he cannot do.”
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