The Auburn system did not go unchallenged. In the 1870s, a group of reformers
argued that fixed sentences, imposed silence, and isolation did nothing to
improve prisoners; they proposed that penal institutions should offer the promise
of early release as a prime tool for rehabilitation. Echoing the views of the
Quakers a century earlier, the reformers presented an ideology that would heavily
influence American corrections for the next century.
This “new penology”was put into practice at New York’s Elmira State Prison
in 1876. At Elmira, good behavior was rewarded by early release, and misbehavior
was punished with extended time under a three-grade system of classification.
On entering the institution, the offender was assigned a grade of 2. If the inmate
followed the rules and completed work and school assignments, after six months
he was moved up to grade 1, the necessary grade for release. If, however, the
inmate broke institutional rules, he was lowered to grade 3. A grade 3 inmate
needed to behave properly for three months before he could return to grade 2 and
begin to work back toward grade 1 and eventual release.8
Although other penal institutions did not adopt the Elmira model, its theories
came into prominence in the first two decades of the twentieth century thanks to
the Progressive movement in criminal justice. The Progressives—linked to the positivist
school of criminology discussed in Chapter 2—believed that criminal behavior
was caused by social, economic, and biological reasons and, therefore, a
corrections system should have a goal of treatment, not punishment. Consequently,
they trumpeted a medical model for prisons, which held that institutions should
offer a variety of programs and therapies to cure inmates of their “ills,” whatever the
root causes. The Progressives were greatly responsible for the spread of indeterminate
sentences (Chapter 10), probation (Chapter 11), community sanctions
(Chapter 11), and parole...