A Century-old Corrections Program

“We are always looking back, and looking forward.” John Stein has sent us an an outline, written in 1915 by Healey and Bronner, for a model correctional program:

Treatment in general
Before discussing specific phases of treatment, its general moods and aims should be taken up.

(a) The entire institutional life should be adjusted with the ideal that it is treatment, that it is educational, and all to the end that the delinquent shall be better fitted to meet an outside environment.

(b) This requires high individualization. One of the arguments against the advisability of a set system is found in the successes which are actually obtained by a rational and understanding approach to the problem of the individual. Both education and work must be adapted to the individual needs.

(c) Three things to avoid are any kind of deceit, the show of pedantry, and any demonstration of irrationality. It is most desirous to make the individual rational and honest, and this can only be done by showing a good example in these respects.

(d) The method should be elastic in all ways, particularly in institutions for girls, where allowance must be made for outbreaks and explosions of pent up emotions and energies, either occasional or periodic. Of course, physical fluctuations must be allowed for.

(e) Punishments: These must be highly individualized according to personalities involved. There is no doubt that stimulus to doing better is more apt to result from the promise of rewards than the administering of penalties. There must be goals toward which the delinquent is to work as the reward of good behavior. With constructive treatment the problems of discipline largely tend to disappear. It should be remembered that coercion and punishment by inflicting pain are the lowest levels of control.

(f) Above all things, mental vacuities, either on weekdays or Sundays, must be prevented. “The empty mind is the devil’s workshop.” There should be abundant opportunity for good conversational reactions. This may be as important as formal instruction, and always the mental life should be the first and foremost consideration.

(g) The whole institutional equipment should be used with the sole idea of its social and moral worth.

(h) General and social life should include the planning of service and of rendering helpfulness to others in the institution. Cultivation of this is worth much, and from it can be built up larger ideas of social relationships. Perhaps the best way to avoid jealousies is to inculcate the idea of service, one to the other in the institution.

(i) Inmate social life: One of the best helps toward a better life is an understanding friend and advisor with whom the cause and the help for trouble may be discussed.

(j) In considering treatment in general it must not be thought that building up is always the point, or that positive habits are the only good; the inhibitions of bad impulses must also be considered. In some cases excessive physical vigor, or obstinancy of will, make special forms of modification necessary.