NCJ Number
156856
Journal
Corrections Today Volume: 57 Issue: 5 Dated: (August 1995) Pages: 70-73
Date Published
1995
Length
4 pages
Annotation
The organization now known as the American Correctional Association emerged in the 1870's, during a wave of penal reform that turned policies away from the use of capital punishment and corporal punishment and toward incarceration as a more desirable and humane form of punishment.
Abstract
The debate during that era focused on the best method to encourage inmate reform: the Pennsylvania system of solitary confinement, silence, and work or the New York system of congregate work, dining, and silence. Enoch Wines organized the National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline, held in October 1870. The conference discussed many topics: contract prison labor, indemnity for wrongful imprisonment, and executive clemency. The National Prison Association of the United States began with this conference and later became the American Correctional Association. The conference also produced two other innovations: the first reformatory, Elmira, and the International Prison Commission. The founders of the conference accomplished their goals of providing a national forum for persons concerned with prison reform, establishing a need for an international congress, and adopting the Declaration of Principles.