Background
Zebulon Reed Brockway was born on April 28, 1827 at Lyme, Connecticut, the son of Zebulon and Caroline Brockway, both descendants of an old New England family.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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(International Prison Congress paused on their tour of ins...)
International Prison Congress paused on their tour of inspection to visit theE lmira Reformatory and pay their respects toM r. Z. R. Brockway, the first superintendent, I chanced to be among them. In a quiet moment Mr. Brockway, as an old friend, asked if, at my convenience, I would look over some memoranda he was preparing with reference to his share in the work of prison management in this country. Of course I gladly consented. When the manuscript came to me I was amazed at the amount of labor he must have expended, for it consisted of more than 1600 pages, every word of which he had written with his own hand! Deeply impressed with its value as a human document I begged him to give it to the public, instead of leaving it only for the family archives. 1offered to aid him in preparing it for the press if he would consent. This permission was rather reluctantly given, for it was hard to convince him lliat llicrc were enougji people interested to justify its publication. I f, in carrying out my part of the agreement, I have somewhat compressed the story, disjointed here and there the long sentences that he loves to swing, and occasionally replaced his words with others more to my own liking, I beg his pardon. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology. Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org
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Zebulon Reed Brockway was born on April 28, 1827 at Lyme, Connecticut, the son of Zebulon and Caroline Brockway, both descendants of an old New England family.
After receiving an elementary education, Zebulon Brockway attended and graduated from a local academy.
At twenty-one, equipped with an elementary education and a few years of business experience, Zebulon Brockway took what proved a decisive step in his life; he became a clerk in the Wethersfield prison. Promotion followed promotion.
In 1851 he went to the Albany (New York) County Penitentiary as Amos Pilsbury's deputy; in 1853 he was made superintendent of the Albany Municipal and County Almshouse and in 1854 head of the new Monroe County Penitentiary at Rochester.
In 1861 he went to Detroit as superintendent of the new House of Correction, a position he held until 1872, when circumstances forced his resignation.
He again came into his own when in 1876 he accepted the superintendency of the Elmira State Reformatory for men, which he directed for twenty-five years.
In 1894 his management of the reformatory was investigated by the State Board of Charities which recommended that he be dismissed. The investigation was apparently partisan in character, however, and Governor Flower, acting upon the report of a special commission appointed by him refused to deprive Brockway of his post.
In 1900 he retired from public service to devote himself to charitable and educational work, but in 1905 he was induced to run for mayor of Elmira. He served in that capacity for two years with the same deep sense of duty and uncompromising honesty which characterized his whole life. At the conferences of the National (later the American) Prison Association his fine, white-bearded countenance and patriarchal figure were frequently seen, and his opinions were eagerly sought on all important questions.
(International Prison Congress paused on their tour of ins...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
While not the innovator of the "indeterminate sentence" he was the first to put it into our statutes. All punishment had for him but one aim, the protection of society against crime. This he thought could best be secured by reforming the criminal, if possible, or by confining the incorrigible indefinitely. If reformation alone was to be the key to liberty, the fixed sentence had to give way to an absolutely indeterminate sentence and the execution of this sentence had to be entrusted to the administrative authorities of all institutions within a given jurisdiction. He presented his ideas to the National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline in a remarkable paper entitled "The Ideal of a True Prison System for a State".
Brockway early experimented with evangelistic forms and methods of reformation, but, with wider experience he lost faith in them. Greatly influenced by continental criminological thought, he gradually embraced a deterministic philosophy of conduct which became the basis for his work at Elmira. There, physical, manual, and military training, together with ethical and esthetic instruction, were the instruments he used in his task of "socializing the anti-social. "
Quotations:
Three years in business life lent credence to the judgment pronounced on him as a boy, "That lad will never become forehanded for he has not the money-getting instinct. "
Reformatory prison treatment--and to him there was no other kind--meant "education of the whole man, his capacity, his habits and tastes, by a rational procedure, whose central motive and law of development are found" in what he elsewhere calls "the ennobling influences of established industrial efficiency".
Married on April 13, 1853, to Jane Woodhouse of Wethersfield, Zebulon Brockway survived his wife by nine years.