Prison%20and%20Mental%20Institution%20Reform

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Prison and Mental Institution Reform

• By Greg Abraham, Michael Brownewell, Jennifer
  Zavala, Hitonshu Desai

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Prison Reform

• Around the 1840s, state legislatures began
  abolishing debtors prisons.
• Capitol offenses were reduced.
• Brutal punishment, such as whipping and branding
  was slowly eliminated.

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• New idea prisons should reform as well as
  punish (which is why they were sometimes called
  reformatories and penitentiaries) to reverse
  tendency to create hardened criminals.
• Some people, such as Dorothea Dix proposed that
  children should be taught at an earlier age about
  discipline and consequences.
• Prisons specifically for women were created.
• The most important prison reform leaders were
  Dorothea Dix and Elizabeth Fry.

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Insane Asylum Reform

• Dorothea Dix was the main reform leader for
  Mental Institutions.
• At an early age she decided that she wanted to
  teach.
• She opened her own dame school (a school for
  girls because they could not attend public
  school).
• She became ill and was forced to close her school
  in 1836. She decided to travel to England for
  medicinal remedies.
• There she met Elizabeth Fry and Samuel Tuke who
  were involved in prison and insane asylum reform.
  Dorothea learned new theories of caring for the
  insane, such as moral treatment, seclusion from
  family and society, less use of mechanical
  restraints, and useful tasks to keep the patients
  busy.

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• On March 28, 1841, Dorothea volunteered to teach
  female inmates at the Cambridge, Massachusetts
  jail. Afterwards she toured the rest of the jail
  and was appalled at the conditions. She saw
  insane men and women chained naked to walls and
  locked into cages. Most were malnourished,
  brutalized, given no heat, and sleeping on stone
  floors.
• This visit caused Dix to begin her campaign to
  reform conditions for the mentally ill. She first
  tried to get stoves placed in cells and to have
  the inmates fully clothed.
• Later she made a report to the Massachusetts
  state legislature to make reforms regarding the
  mentally ill.
• She traveled to other states as well causing them
  to make improvements in the care for the insane.
• She established hospitals and improved life for
  the mentally ill.

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• When the Civil War began in 1860, Dorothea
  volunteered to form the Army Nurses Corps. She
  was later made Superintendent of Nurses for the
  Union Army.
• After the war, she traveled the south, helping to
  reform and repair damage that had been done
  during the many battles.
• In 1881, she was stricken by an illness. This
  left her bedridden.
• In 1887, she died at Trenton Hospital in New
  Jersey, a hospital that she established.

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• It is only through the sacrifices of individuals
  like Dorothea Dix, that the mentally ill receive
  the care and attention they do, rather than being
  locked up. But the battle is not over. There are
  still many mentally ill people who receive no
  care, who are homeless, and who do not benefit
  from the many programs available in American
  society today.

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Misc. -!FIX THIS UP!-

• Others were Samuel Tuke, who was a reformer in
  England but the came to America. (Samuel Howe,
  Thomas Kirkbride, and Alexis de Tocqueville were
  other reformers for the mentally ill)
• Investigated and reported treatment of insane and
  led to humane institutions
• She called the asylums museums of madness because
  of the horrible things she witnessed
• She found mentally ill women kept in the same
  prison cells as male criminals
• Both her mother and grandmother were mentally ill
  (this is probably why she was interested in
  reform of these mental institutions).
• ------websites-----
• https//www.suite101.com/article.cfm/17456/105859
• http//www.dhhs.state.nc.us/mhddsas/DIX/dorothea.h
  tml
• http//shs.westport.k12.ct.us/socialreform/asy.htm
  
• http//websrv.utica.edu/faculty/tbrown/times/obits
  /dix.htm

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