ABSTRACT
In the opening decades of the twentieth century, new ideas and new programs transformed public attitudes and social policies toward the criminal, the delinquent, and the mentally ill. The innovations are well known for they have dominated every aspect of criminal justice, juvenile justice, and mental health right through the middle 1960s. They include probation, parole, and the indeterminate sentence; the juvenile court and the outpatient clinic; and novel designs for the penitentiary, the reformatory, and the insane asylum. To understand the minimal success of outpatient clinics or psychopathic hospitals or after-care measures, one must confront the asylum and its residents, the chronic insane. The psychopathic hospitals became the handmaidens of the asylums. The contrast between ‘asylum’ and ‘hospital’ became the point of departure for a host of speeches and newspaper articles anticipating improvement in the care and treatment of the mentally ill.
