Barred Progress: Indiana Prison Reform, 1880-1920

Abstract

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.