A reformatory or reformatory school is a youth detention center or an adult correctional facility popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Western countries. In the United Kingdom and United States, they came out of social concerns about cities, poverty, immigration, and gender following industrialization, as well as from a shift in penology to reforming instead of punishing the criminal. They were traditionally single-sex institutions that relied on education, vocational training, and removal from the city. Although their use declined throughout the 20th century, their impact can be seen in practices like the United States' continued implementation of parole and the indeterminate sentence.
United Kingdom
Reformatories and industrial schools
Reformatory schools were penal facilities originating in the 19th century that provided for criminal children and were certified by the government starting in 1850. As society's values changed, the use of reformatories declined and they were coalesced by an Act of Parliament into a single structure known as approved schools. Although similar in some of their practice, industrial schools were intended to prevent vulnerable children becoming criminal.
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. These opportunities were not available in the cities. Youngsters were very visible on the streets. 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 1847, that children under 14 should be tried in a special court and not an adult court. Begging and vagrancy was rife, and it was these low level misdemeanours that caused the magistrates to send vulnerable youngsters to industrial schools to learn to be industrious, and learn skills that would make then more employable.
More serious crimes, required an element of punishment in an environment away from older prisoners, who would have a further negative effect on the youngster, before the task of reforming their ways. The power to set up such an establishment was given in the Youthful Offenders Act 1854 (the Reformatory Schools Act). This provided financial assistance and support for reformatory schools for convicted young offenders as an alternative to prison. Industrial schools were regularised three years later by the Industrial Schools Act 1857.
Early reformatories
The first juvenile prison was the 1838 Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight. Separation of youngsters had been proposed earlier by Peel's Gaol Act of 1823, but implementation had generally failed. From 1824 to 1826 some boys were housed on the prison hulk, Captivity (the former Bellerophon). Even earlier in 1817, Samuel Hoare the Quaker banker and philanthropist and the architect James Bevan, had proposed a new suitable prison: there was no consensus as to whether a prison should be for deterrence, retribution, punishment, removing a cause of nuisance or reforming the prisoner. 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.
By 1866 there were 51 certified reform schools in England and 14 in Scotland, but this had declined to 43 in 1913, while certified industrial schools had become more popular moving from 50 in 1866 to 132 (residential) and 21 (dayschools) in 1913.
Earlier initiatives began in 1756 with the founding of the Marine Society "for the purpose of clothing landsman and boys for the use of the king's ship, and as an expedient to provide for poor boys who might become a nuisance." 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."
Conditions
The regime was strict but fair and humane within the context of the times. Good behaviour was rewarded and poor behaviour punished. Punishment followed rule-breaking and rewards followed compliance. The rules were clear and transparent. The morality was simple and this would provide some security as children.