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Seminary of Virtue: The Ideology and Practice of Inmate Reform at Eastern State Penitentiary, 1829-1971

This study is an analysis of the role educational programming has played in reforming inmates in American correctional institutions between the Jacksonian era and the 1970s. A case study, "Seminary of Virtue" focuses on the educational curriculum at Philadelphia's famed Eastern State Penitentiary, a cutting-edge institution that originated the Pennsylvania System of penal discipline. "Seminary of Virtue" argues that Eastern State Penitentiary's extensive and aggressive educational program reflected a general American belief that correctional institutions should educate inmates as a way of reducing recidivism and thereby "reforming" them. While Americans remained committed to educating inmates, Eastern State's curriculum evolved during its century and a half institutional life. As its emphasis shifted from the religiously oriented "reform" of prisoners in the early nineteenth-century to a medical model of "rehabilitation" a half century later, Eastern State's educational program evolved, shifting from a curriculum of rudimentary literacy skills, religious instruction and an apprenticeship of sorts to industrial education in the mid-nineteenth century and then finally to a traditional academic curriculum in the first third of the twentieth century. / History

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/1562
Date January 2009
CreatorsKahan, Paul
ContributorsCutler, William W., Hilty, James W., Urwin, Gregory J. W., 1955-, Zimmerman, Jonathan, 1961-
PublisherTemple University. Libraries
Source SetsTemple University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis/Dissertation, Text
Format327 pages
RightsIN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Relationhttp://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/1544, Theses and Dissertations

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