Author: Wyatt James Bouma

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13:

Throughout the Progressive Era, Progressive prison reformers condemned the practice of contracting out convict labor in America’s prisons. Three states played unique roles regarding the advancement of Progressive penology. Early in the nineteenth century, New York State prison officials created the nation’s foremost prison model at Auburn Prison. In the late nineteenth century, New York reformers initiated the national Progressive movement of prison reform. Specifically, New York State officials did so through the abolishing of contract labor in the state’s prisons. Colorado embraced the national Progressive movement of prison reform and became the most significant influencer of Progressive penology in the American West. Colorado prison warden, Thomas J. Tynan, implemented his nationally recognized “honor road camps,” for state use, in 1909. Wyoming openly resisted the national movement of Progressive prison reform. Over the first two decades of the Progressive Era, Wyoming’s Board of Charities and Reform gave the Prison Lessee full control of the costs of operation, the wellbeing of the inmates, as well as the complete control of the profits produced from the prisoners’ labor.