[1] In an assessment of Osborne's life, a New York Times book reviewer wrote: "His career as a penologist was short, but in the interval of the few years he served he succeeded in revolutionizing American prison reform, if not always in fact, then in awakening responsibility....

His family included a number of eminent reformers, particularly his grandmother, Martha Coffin Wright and her sister, Lucretia Coffin Mott and his uncle William Lloyd Garrison, who were organizers of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in Seneca Falls, New York.

In 1896, he became a trustee on the board of the George Junior Republic, a self-governing youth colony, and soon its chairman, just in time to lead a campaign to prevent New York State from shutting it down.

In 1903, the family sold the company to the International Harvester Trust, leaving Osborne to pursue social reform and public service.

In 1907, Governor Charles Evans Hughes selected Osborne to serve as upstate commissioner on the state's first New York Public Service Commission.

At one point, to determine whether railroads could safely trim staff as they proposed, Osborne dressed as a hobo and rode the rails and was once arrested by police in Syracuse, New York in the course of his sleuthing.

The following year, he persuaded New York Governor William Sulzer to appoint him chairman of a new State Commission on Prison Reform.

His principal opponents were prisoners who had lived comfortably within the system before his reforms, by intimidating others or using their financial resources to bribe guards for privileges.

One of these, a former Manhattan banker in prison for larceny, used his financial and political connections to instigate a rigged "investigation" of Osborne's administration.

When he was indicted for perjury, neglect of duty, and "unlawful [sexual] acts with inmates," Osborne fought back with a speaking tour of the state.

Carnegie Hall saw two mass meetings supporting his defense, one attended by the retired president of Harvard University Charles William Eliot.

In a speech at the Twentieth Century Club in New York City, he denounced "degrading" uniforms and "absurd" procedures: "When the men return from working on the seawall, a place where they could not possibly obtain anything but sand, boulders and seaweed, they are stripped and searched.

During his tenure at Portsmouth, Osborne also met and became a long-term mentor to prisoner and future author Victor Folke Nelson.

True to Osborne's founding spirit, the Association's 25 programs are all designed to offer individuals the opportunity, the tools, and the support to build or rebuild their lives.