Bates, Sanford (1884–1972)

Background

Sanford Bates, born July 17, 1884, practiced law from 1906 to 1918 in Boston and served two 2-year terms in the Massachusetts legislature. He entered penology reluctantly. First, the Republican administration in Boston persuaded Bates to act as street commissioner. A few months later, the city needed a commissioner of penal institutions and appointed Bates, over his objections. By the time he retired as commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Institutions and Agencies in 1954 at the age of 70, Bates had served successively as penitentiary commissioner of his native Massachusetts (appointed by then-Governor Calvin Coolidge), and parole commissioner of New York State and superintendent of Federal Prisons. He was director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 1930 to 1937, and then went on to serve as executive director of the Boys Clubs of America, Inc. until 1940.

His performance earned him a reputation both nationally and internationally. For example, he was elected president of the American Prison Association as well as the International Penal and Penitentiary Commission. He headed a five-year survey of sentencing, probation, and parole in connection with the American Bar Foundation's study of criminal justice. President Harry Truman appointed Bates to the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention. Bates died on September 8, 1972, at the age of 88.

Contributions

Bates's 50 years of service left a mark on the study and practice of penology. While commissioner of penal institutions in Boston, he introduced a prison school and partial self-government for inmates. During his decade as commissioner of the Massachusetts State Department of Correction, Bates revised the parole system, introduced printing and foundry work to the available prison industries, established merit pay for prison employees and a state wage for prisoners, founded model institutions for male and female “defective delinquents,” and created the first crime prevention bureau connected with a prison department. He also offered inmates university [Page 64]extension courses and arranged for county prisoners to be examined by state psychiatrists.

During his seven-year tenure of director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 15 institutions were added to the system, including not only Alcatraz (a famous maximum-security prison) but also libraries, medical departments, bureaus of social work, and training programs for guards. In both New York and New Jersey, Bates established model parole systems. In New Jersey, he transferred many prisoners from maximum-security prisons to work farms and experimented with using inmate labor on public outdoor projects.

One of Bates's most significant contributions was ridding the penal system of politics. At the time he became director of the federal prison system, federal prisons were, as one scholar observed, “virtual hostages of the patronage process.” Wardens were lightly supervised by the Department of Justice while dedicated to maintaining good ties to their sponsors in Congress to whom they owed their jobs. By contrast, Bates sought to base hiring and promotion on merit, not patronage. While he recognized the importance of maintaining good ties with Congress, he noted in a March 26, 1929, letter to Attorney General William D. Mitchell that “I should confidently expect the backing of my superiors in withstanding that happily infrequent kind of pressure which comes sometimes from the unreasonable demands on persons whose chief aim in life is political.” His position was particularly noteworthy given that he himself had been a politician in a state known for its patronage.

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