Vocational Training Programs

Early Beginnings

As far back as 1790, at the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia, male inmates did masonry, maintenance, weaving, and shoemaking, and female inmates prepared flax and hemp, washed and mended clothes, and spun cotton, yarn, and wool. In 1803, at New York's Newgate Prison, prisoners made shoes and boots, cut nails, and engaged in blacksmithing, carpentry, and weaving. Inmate labor produced all of the sheets, pillowcases, woolen clothing, and stockings for the inmates. By 1820, the New York State Legislature authorized prison administrators to require inmates to build roads and canals. In 1828, the distribution of inmate labor at New York's Auburn Prison included workers in a tool shop, a shoemaker's shop, a tailor's shop, a weaver's shop, a blacksmith's shop, and a copper shop. The chief vocational activities in New Jersey's prisons were chair making, cordwainery, and weaving.

The Reformatory Movement

The 1870s marked the beginning of the reformatory movement for youthful offenders in the United States. Unlike the earlier penitentiaries, reformatories emphasized learning to read and write, religious instruction and Bible reading classes, and good work habits and industriousness. The philosophy of the first reformatories—the Detroit House of Corrections in 1871 and the Elmira Reformatory in upstate New York in 1876—was to rehabilitate the inmates through vocational instruction and trades training. The original goal of prison vocational training in these places was to help the inmate overcome idleness and generate revenue through prison industries while developing good work habits and vocational skills. By 1882, the Elmira Reformatory was offering summer classes in plumbing, tailoring, telegraphy, and printing. In 1886, one of the first [Page 1010]vocational trade schools was built and opened at Elmira Reformatory. By the early 1900s, reformatories patterned after Elmira were established throughout the United States. Unfortunately, there were never enough trained civilian vocational instructors, and too many young adult inmates in the reformatories were unstable or unenthusiastic about education and work.

Emergence of Modern Inmate Vocational Training

During the 1930s, a number of federal reformatories and penitentiaries opened that laid the framework for the modern system of prison education and training in the United States. These institutions—in Atlanta, Georgia; Leavenworth, Kansas; Chillicothe, Ohio; Alderson, West Virginia; Lewisburg, Pennsylvania; and McNeil Island, Washington—particularly emphasized vocational education as a means of reducing crime and managing inmates while they were incarcerated. Approximately 10 vocational instructors were hired at each institution, and a number of new courses were developed. In 1932, for example, at the Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia, 455 female inmates (50% of the inmate population) were participating in vocational training. The federal penitentiaries at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and Leavenworth, Kansas, had about 30% of their inmate populations participating in vocational programs, and 75% of the inmates at the new Atlanta Penitentiary expressed interest in participating in the new vocational programs.

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