ABSTRACT
Seventeen women's reformatories came into being during the Progressive period and the years immediately following it. By 1935, such institutions could be found from Maine to California, Nebraska to Arkansas. Several patterns underlay this broad and quite rapid expansion of the women's prison system. The reformatory movement had a strong but less profound impact in the Midwest. There in the early decades of the twentieth century seven states established reformatories in rapid succession, bringing the total to eight. The regional differences in treatment of female prisoners also reflected the greater receptivity of northeastern and midwestern states to proto-Progressive and Progressive reforms. Finally, the women's reformatory movement ground to a halt because it had achieved its aims. It had sustained itself for sixty years, and in those northeastern and midwestern states where it had flourished, it had for the most part realized its fundamental goal of separate prisons for women.
