ABSTRACT

The view, illustrated in the exchange between Gill and Coughlin above, was the prevailing philosophy of library outreach to prisoners until nearly the end of the twentieth century. Reformers attempted to mold the minds of deviants at a young age. As early as 1825, the New York House of Refuge, a juvenile institution, began a library to strengthen the character of the wayward urchins. By the mid-ninteenth century, most penal institutions had libraries of some sort. Most books were supplied from outside sources. But almost without exception these libraries were homogeneous and designed to inculcate the moral and religious ideas of the hegemonic classes. The one great experiment at innovative library outreach came at Sing Sing prison in the 1840s. Beginning with the work of the New York Prison Association in the mid-1840s and picking up speed after the Civil War, penology became more and more "scientific".