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Barred Progress: Indiana Prison Reform, 1880-1920

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / On January 9, 1821, the Indiana General Assembly passed a bill authorizing the
construction of the state’s first prison. Within a century, Indiana’s prison system would
transform from a small structure in Jeffersonville holding less than twenty inmates into a
multi-institutional network holding thousands. Within that transition, ideas concerning
the treatment of criminals shifted significantly from a penology focused on punishment,
hard labor, and low cost, to a one based on social science, skill-building, education, and
public funding. These new ideas were not always sound, however, and often the
implementation of those ideas was either distorted or incomplete. In any case, by the
second decade of the twentieth century, Indiana’s prisons had developed into the large,
organized, highly-regulated—yet very imperfect—system that it is today. This study
focuses on the most intense period of organization and reform during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/1637
Date January 2008
CreatorsClark, Perry R.
ContributorsBarrows, Robert G. (Robert Graham), 1946-, Coleman, Annie Gilbert, Kelly, Jason M.
Source SetsIndiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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