ABSTRACT
Americans in the period 1900-1920 set out to design and implement alternatives to incarceration, a change that had a very particular meaning to them. Institutions did not so much represent buildings with walls but a style of operation that was rigid, inflexible, and machinelike. Americans enacted probation, parole, and indeterminate sentences for adult offenders, established juvenile courts for delinquents, and founded outpatient clinics for the mentally ill. The indeterminate sentence with release through parole altered the character of prison sentences. Before 1900, judges set the precise term of incarceration for adult offenders. The rapidity with which transformations occurred, the fact that criminal justice assumed a new character within twenty years, reflected the broad nature of the supporting coalition. Reformers' special approach to social problems reflected, first, the influence of the new social sciences. They were typically the graduates of the new colleges and universities whose curriculums included courses on the "punishment of criminality" and "public and private charities".
