College Honors Program

“’Dream Prison’ Becomes a Failure”: Howard B. Gill, the Norfolk Prison Colony, and American Prisons Before the Age of Mass Incarceration

Date of Creation

5-17-2023

Document Type

Campus Access Only

First Advisor

Justin Poché

Abstract

This thesis considers Gill’s career from his tenure as the Superintendent of Norfolk Prison Colony to his efforts to educate the next generation of prison workers. Gill was not alone in his desire to alter the corrections process, and his ideas of how to positively change the system typically aligned with the ideas of other reformers of his time. He was educated during the height of the Progressive Era in the first quarter of the 20th Century, and his work in prisons suggests that he was greatly influenced by this period. Reformers like Gill embraced a new science of incarceration that reflected a shift from reformist origins in the 19th century Protestant Benevolent Empire. A greater moral concern for physical suffering, and the spiritual consequences attached to it, led to more humane practices towards vulnerable members of the population. The period between the end of the nineteenth Century and the beginning of the Punitive Era by the late twentieth century served as an interlude during which social science took the place of religion. Scholars studying societal outcasts took a more sympathetic view towards their subjects, and the prison was no exception to this trend. Gill applied modern social science to the layout and function of prisons. This extended beyond his time as the superintendent at Norfolk prison and inspired him to take graduate level courses in sociology, psychology, and criminology in the middle of his career. His multifaceted career makes it difficult to identify a linear trajectory in the development of his ideology.

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