ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes an aspect of the social control of women by focusing on a particular type of prison, the women's reformatory. It explores the conjunction between formal vehicles of social control and the internalization of their social control "messages" by the targeted group of inmates. The chapter examines social control in terms of social class-the process by which, through establishment and operation of women's reformatories, middle-class crusaders came to impose their definition of womanliness on working-class inmates. It concerns the movement's political implications. Without denying the benevolence of the reformers' aims, the chapter attempts to look beyond good intentions to the movement's methods of social control and their results. Most other women's reformatories also aimed at rescue and reform and used techniques of social control similar to those of Albion. From Maine to North Carolina, New York to Nebraska, reformatories for women removed errant women from the streets, trained them in domestic skills, and returned them to the home.
