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- When New York's Elmira Reformatory opened in 1876, it rejected 19th century penology's holy trinity of silence, obedience and labor. Elmira's goal would be reform of the convict, and its methods would be psychological rather than physical. Instead of coercing with the lash, Elmira would encourage with rewards.
correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/docs2day/elmira.html
Still, the Elmira system was influential in prison reform. Two central ideas emerged from the Elmira system: differentiating between juvenile and adult offenders; and acknowledging the possibility of prisoner rehabilitation.
Elmira Reformatory in upstate New York offered the most successful program of approaches since the eighteenth-century origins of American correctional education. Zebulon Reed Brockway, who established the Elmira prison program, served in prison reform for fifty years.
The Elmira system classified and separated various types of prisoners, gave them individualized treatment emphasizing vocational training and industrial employment, used indeterminate sentences, rewarded good behaviour, and paroled inmates under supervision.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
When New York's Elmira Reformatory opened in 1876, it rejected 19th century penology's holy trinity of silence, obedience and labor. Elmira's goal would be reform of the convict, and its methods would be psychological rather than physical.
While changes at Elmira finally took place by the end of the century, the institution never recovered from earlier abuses and the institution's supervisors became increasingly skeptical of the ability of adult reformatories to rehabilitate criminals.
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The Elmira Reformatory was founded in 1876 as an initiative to transform prisons from institutions of punishment to places of rehabilitation. Its first superintendent, Zebulon Brockway, designed a system through which first time offenders were educated and reformed to reenter society as model citizens.
