ABSTRACT
The facts of ample court commitments and a steady inmate population aside, they constantly had to justify themselves against charges that conditions in juvenile asylums were mechanical, abnormal, and guaranteed to warp the personalities of children. Being the last resort was an unenviable position. However, comforting such sessions, juvenile institutions had to respond in more direct and practical fashion to the Progressive viewpoint. Clearly, they, like the prisons, had to abandon all the essential features of the Jacksonian style of incarceration. In fact, the reform agenda, at least in terms of rhetoric and design, was more acceptable to the superintendents than might have been expected. The training school designation points directly to the reformers' educational ideals for juvenile institutions. Although the notion that inmates should be educated was anything but novel, Progressives believed that a well-planned school program would assure rehabilitation.
