Zebulon Brockway

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zebulon Reed Brockway (1827 - 1920) was a penologist and is sometimes regarded as the "father of prison reform" in the United States of America.

Brockway was born in Lyme, Connecticut and began his career as a prison guard at the state prison in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Later he worked as warden of the municipal alms house in Albany, New York for two years. By 1854, he was head of the Monroe County Penitentiary in Rochester, NY. In 1861, Brockway became the head of the prison in Detroit, where he attempted to introduce the "indeterminate sentence."

While warden at the Elmira Reformatory in upstate New York from 1876 to 1900, Brockway introduced a program of education, training in useful trades, physical activity, indeterminate sentences, inmate classification, and an incentive program.

In his later years as warden at Elmira, he was accused of running a corrupt and brutal establishment.

In 1912, he wrote Fifty Years of Prison Service.