The Connecticut Prison Association and the Search for Reformatory Justice. Gordon S. Bates
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in how to handle the number of people being processed by the state courts and ending up in jail or prison. Legislators, consequently, gave more time to crafting new laws to define and control both the individual criminal and the sense of disorder being created by crime.
In view of all these factors, conditions were good in 1875 for a response such as the formation of the Prisoners’ Friend Corporation. In its alliance with the state, led by participants in or supporters of state government, the corporation became a part of a complex industry that would develop gradually around the burgeoning criminal justice system. The religious compassion that was undoubtedly behind the agency was mixed with the civic desire to give Connecticut the best possible prison and jail system, using the most modern concepts of penology and giving the released offenders the best possible chance to be constructive citizens.
THE PROLIFERATION OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS
The formation of voluntary associations in the United States has a long history and has received intense study in the twentieth century. It was during the nineteenth century, however, that the formation of voluntary associations became a veritable art form, filling almost every niche in American society in which contrary opinions had been raised or in which some injustice was perceived. Listen to William Ellery Channing, an esteemed Unitarian preacher and poet (1780–1842), preaching about the situation: “You can scarcely name an objective for which some institution has not been formed. Would men spread one opinion, or crush another? They make a society. Would they improve the penal code, or relieve poor debtors? They make societies. Would they encourage, argue or manufacture a science? They make societies. Would one class encourage horse racing and another discourage travel on Sundays? They form societies.”49
The process by which people band together, formally or informally, to achieve a common goal is probably as old as the emergence of Homo sapiens and may even go back as far as the Neanderthal culture. It seems to have been one of the ways in which humans moved beyond simply surviving in hostile environments as individuals to thriving in communities. Some students of the subject hold that it is the primary way. James Hunt, an authority on the subject, goes so far as to state that “man as a historical being is to be understood in terms of the types of associations (voluntary and involuntary) under which or in the face of which he lives or in which he participates.”50
In the nineteenth century there were in the United States so many voluntary associations that Alexis de Tocqueville concluded, “In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used, or applied to a greater multitude of objects, than in America.” Tocqueville went on to distinguish three permanent associations: the State, the Church (by which he meant the established churches), and the Corporation. He recognized other associations of a less permanent nature and wrote with amazement about the number of these small, often very transitory, groups he found in America.51 What has become especially clear since Tocqueville wrote is that many associations display a surprising and unpredictable durability. For example, the Women’s Relief Corps, the Union of Home Work, and the Widow’s Society, all typical voluntary associations in Hartford, came into being in the same era as the Connecticut Prison Association. All had a relatively short existence, often terminated within fifty years of their inception, but left behind an important impact on society as a whole. Among them were state associations to improve the way crime was processed and criminals were treated during incarceration. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Delaware, and Maryland led the way in America. By 1875 the time was ripe for the same reaction to criminal justice in Connecticut.
David Knoke and James Wood identify four categories of social influence associations in the American experience: legal-justice, health, civic action, and neighborhood-community. The categories are interrelated and defy strictly interpreted boundaries. The CPA has exemplified elements of all four. From its inception the CPA functioned as a legal-justice association, drafting bills and advocating for them in the state legislature. It has also demonstrated elements of the civic action type, organizing volunteer programs and working with municipal governments to change or implement public policies.52
In the health field, from 1875 to about 1940 the CPA had legislatively mandated responsibilities for offenders deemed “insane” and has continued to mount programs to deal with all manner of health-related concerns of offenders. Finally, it has worked in and helped to organize neighborhood groups to effect changes in the treatment of adults and youth offenders in the community. Modern studies have also described the CPA as a “benevolent” or social influence type of voluntary agency, which is usually formed to seek some palliation of suffering or the provision of support for a segment of the population.
To fully understand the CPA within the context of voluntary associations, it is helpful to recognize that beyond the delivery of actual services such organizations are necessarily involved in the exercise of power. That is true particularly of associations that request and receive public funding or that act as advocates for some segment of the public. Social influence associations, in particular, even those not focused on advocacy per se, are apt to expose areas of genuine human need, which in turn can be traced to basic forms of injustice that demand change.
The resulting tensions, especially if they are reported in newspapers or other media, can cause both embarrassment and resentment externally within the governmental and legislative arenas or internally within the social service networks. Those tensions can become severe, as government officials seek to deny, redefine, or redress those deficiencies. They can be resolved only with the use of the political or moral power that is present on either side of the dispute. As James Hunt makes clear, “The forms of association which exist in a society in a historical moment are the forms of power in that society, and an effective social ethic requires the organization of power for its purposes and in the forms that permit the realization of its purposes.”53
Summarizing the thought of James Luther Adams, the foremost American proponent of voluntary associations, Hunt argues that there are three obligations for the responsible citizen: first, to educate or reeducate the general citizenry about social injustice; second, to participate in associations that deal with social injustice, especially as it affects underprivileged groups; and third, to facilitate a public discussion of new possibilities in social policy and the organization of society.54 Only those voluntary associations that learn how to assess their degree of power, how to leverage it, and how to manage it intelligently in the midst of their cooperation and competition with other voluntary agencies are going to persist over time. By all those standards the voluntary association called the Connecticut Prison Association has been one of the most successful voluntary associations in Connecticut during the past 150 years.
This brief survey of the cultural context that prevailed in Connecticut in the 1870s suggests, despite a natural concern about the impact of crime as the population grew, restorative justice retained strong roots dating back to colonial times. The Puritan emphasis on God’s grace, coupled with a deep-seated mission to save the lost, imparted to all of New England a sustained religious emphasis on caring for the offender’s spiritual and physical well-being. The New England Theology, led by Nathaniel Taylor and amplified by the radical teaching of Horace Bushnell, both of whom used biblical sources to stress the capacity of the individual to change and evolve, offered a new morality that was scientifically plausible. Sin was no longer the simple explanation.
Human choice made both crime and restoration not only possible but also plausible. The new penitentiaries of the early nineteenth century had constituted a good beginning but had lost sight of their mission. The energy of the prison reform movement after the Civil War found sustenance in the newly enlightened humanitarianism springing from seminal philosophers in Europe, in the obvious failures of punitive incarceration, and in the potential power of voluntary associations to lead the way to reformation of the individual by reforming the prisons. Restorative justice had much in the culture to support it in 1875.
On the other hand, support for retributive justice increased in the mid-1870s, following the Civil War. As the oldest method of dealing with crime, punishment had the inherent value of common sense. Just as parents had to discipline their children to make them realize the errors of their ways, so society had to react quickly and as harshly as necessary to at least curb the inclination to commit crimes. In the battle over