Brockway, Zebulon

In the years immediately following the Civil War, crime and violence were widespread as a new, urban-based elite established its dominance over the country. Those who did not accept the legitimacy of the ascendant American nation-state, often immigrants and the urban poor, were seen by elites as needing control and training to aid their assimilation. Chief among the efforts at “reforming” the urban poor were institutions in which they would be subject to intense attempts to redefine their reality and behavior to make them more acceptable to the middle-class- and elite-dominated world that was swiftly evolving. The ultimate goal, according to most contemporary experts, was to mold obedient citizen-workers. The premier institution in this process was the Elmira Reformatory, and its superintendent was Zebulon Reed Brockway (1827–1920).

Brockway had been involved in correctional reform from the mid-1800s. Starting as a guard in a Connecticut jail, he moved up, quickly becoming warden of the Monroe County Penitentiary in Rochester, New York, by 1854. After that assignment, he became warden of a house of correction in Detroit, Michigan, where he tried to introduce “indeterminate sentences.” This pioneering attempt was nullified by state courts. Later, he became a prime mover of the reform concept at the Cincinnati meeting of the National Prison Association in 1870. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed warden of the new Elmira Prison, taking office in 1876. In 1880, he began a reform regime, starting with male first-time offenders between the ages of 16 and 25. It was widely felt that this age group would be more amenable to education, vocational training, and moral suasion. The training was often very rudimentary, sometimes focusing on repetitive molding of fine motor skills and rote learning of mathematical principles and tables. Prisoners also had to work in various prison industries, such as a farm, a foundry, and the prison itself. For a brief period when prison industry was banned, Brockway had prisoners [Page 31]drilling with dummy rifles for hours during the day. All this was done to promote discipline and blind obedience. If prisoners made a good adjustment, they were raised a grade and given a parole hearing after a period of time. If prisoners did not respond, they could be demoted a grade and not be eligible for a parole hearing. If they were obdurately recalcitrant, they could be beaten with a strap, have ice-cold water dumped on them while strapped to a chair, be marooned in solitary confinement for months, or even be slapped in the face by the warden himself. Brockway justified all this brutality in his writings and in testimony, which seem strangely at odds with the goal of education and reform as forms of therapy.

Brockway was a master of self-promotion and wrote numerous essays and several books expounding his philosophy and justifying his methods. It is only fair to point out that he popularized and basically originated the humane concept of indeterminate sentence and parole in the United States. The former involved a prisoner being held in a reformatory until he reformed and became qualified for parole. Parole was a strategy of managing prisoners and preparing them for reentry into the outside community. Prisoners who behaved while in prison and progressed according to a three-part system of grades were allowed to have a parole hearing. Paroled inmates remained under state jurisdiction for a period of six months on the outside. Brockway believed that a longer probation was demoralizing and counterproductive. The parolee also had to report to a volunteer guardian each month and provide full particulars concerning his situation and conduct.

...