[1] A U.S. Army Air Corps veteran from World War I, Bennett became an Investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Efficiency in 1919 while studying law in night school at George Washington University.

[2] In 1928, he authored "The Federal Penal and Correctional Problem," a study that called for a number of reforms to the U.S. prison system whose population and responsibilities had expanded considerably with the enforcement of Prohibition.

[1] He was also a long-time opponent of capital punishment, pushed for the expansion of vocational training in prisons, and sought to expand probation and reentry services for incarcerated people.

[4] Beginning on August 11, 1943, eighteen conscientious objectors of World War II at the Danbury Correctional Institution in Connecticut, went on a 135-day work strike to end Jim Crow in the prison dining room.

He wrote to Lowell Naeve, a Danbury prisoner involved in the work strike for integration, charging him with resorting to "undemocratic methods of coercion to force a change."