ABSTRACT
It is commonplace for individuals, particularly those occupying the high places of politics and culture, to keep a diary of their activities and ideas. But it is extraordinary for an institution to do so: to maintain a running account of its ambitions and goals, its successes and failures over a period of years. If diary keepers are not usually the ordinary men of their times, Norfolk was certainly not the typical institution of its time. It represented a grand effort to implement the Progressive reform program for the deviant. The novelty of the Norfolk Diary lay not merely in its form but in its content. The document is as clear and specific a statement of the Progressive program for incarceration as can be found, revealing the internal strengths and weaknesses of the reform design. Despite the tentative quality of what was to constitute the Norfolk plan, the critical assumptions that composed its program represented the essentials of Progressive thinking.
