Reformatory
[1] Reformatory schools were penal facilities originating in the 19th century that provided for criminal children and were certified by the government starting in 1850.
[4] There was a perceived rise in juvenile delinquency in the early 19th century; whereas in a rural economy very young children could gain paid employment doing tasks such as bird scaring and stone gathering.
In 1816, Parliament set up a ‘Committee for Investigating the Alarming Increase in Juvenile Crime in the Metropolis’, in 1837 the writer Charles Dickens published Oliver Twist, a story about a child involved in a street gang, and in 1847 it was recognised in the Juvenile Offences Act 1847that children under 14 should be tried in a special court and not an adult court.
This provided financial assistance and support for reformatory schools for convicted young offenders as an alternative to prison.
Parkhurst aimed to reform the prisoner, provide some education and prepare the youngster to be transported as a free man to the colonies in Australia.
In 1788, the Philanthropic Society was set up and opened an institution at St. George's Fields, Southwark, "for the protection of poor children, and the offspring of convicted felons; and for the reformation of those who have themselves been engaged in criminal practices.
[9] Similarly, normal living conditions for the urban poor involved overcrowded multiple occupancy in buildings with no mains drainage where diseases were rife.
It was run by the Liverpool Juvenile Reform Society Boys were occupied in continually scrubbing the decks and until 1862 in picking oakum (teasing apart old rope so the fibres could be reused).
[10] Two were sentenced to hard labour, but the rest were sent back to the ship and punished with the birch, solitary confinement and a diet of biscuit and water.
An official inquiry reached no firm conclusions as to the cause, noting however that "There remains the theory that the ship was deliberately fired".
The magazine John Bull published a report on the Akbar Scandal, detailing cruel treatment that had apparently led to a number of deaths.
[12][15] The Home Office internal report exonerated the Akbar staff, but this led to a Departmental Committee in 1913 inquiring into punishment practices used, and the welfare of the children with reformatory and industrial schools.
Charles Russell was appointed that year as Chief Inspector of the Reformatory and Industrial Schools shaped new ideas about the boys' welfare.
Social reformers were concerned about the urban poor, especially the growing presence of white immigrants like those from Ireland, slum conditions, and their perceived connection to rising crime rates in cities.
Penologists from around the world gathered to consider new visions for imprisonment and collectively endorsed a general aim for reforming prisoners with their Declaration of Principles.
[17] Reformatories for women aimed to legislate morality through criminalizing female sexuality, contributing to the creation of the category of "delinquent girl.
[19]But when a female inmate, secretly five months pregnant, was flogged to death in the early 1830s, progressive activists were livid, and pushed the New York State Legislature to found Mount Pleasant Prison, in Ossining NY, in 1835, the first female prison created by an act of law in the United States.
[18] Prisons like Bedford Hills (1901 – ) went so far as to adopt a "cottage plan," each housing unit with 28 single rooms (which could be decorated), a kitchen, and a flower garden.
Even well into the 1920s – and supported by the social science of the era, as codified in law by the 1908 Muller v. Oregon ruling – labor in women's prisons would be limited to sewing, cleaning, and other chores.
In contrast, s. 91 (28) exclusively reserves powers over penitentiaries and criminal legislation to federal jurisdiction creating an intricately overlapping burden of responsibility In some provinces, particularly British Columbia, pre-trial detainees greatly suffer relatively to convicted provincial inmates (or even many federal inmates) .
Under current law, most juveniles and anyone sentenced to a term of imprisonment up to and including two years less a day will serve time in a provincial prison or reformatory (although they may be released far earlier due to overcrowding or a determination that further incarceration is unjustified).
