New York House of Refuge

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The New York House of Refuge as seen from the East River on a wood engraving from 1855. ( Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion )

The New York House of Refuge was the first juvenile detention center or correctional facility in the United States and was at times the largest in the country. The 1824/25 founded in 1854 and recently opened in a new building educational and reformatory was on Randalls Iceland in the district of Manhattan in New York City .

history

The New York House of Refuge was the first youth reformatory in the country and emerged from the charitable association Society for the Prevention of Pauperism , which was founded in 1816/17. In the early years, the organization primarily by merchants of was Quakerism and influential local politicians, which mainly Cadwallader Colden , John Griscom , Thomas Eddy and Stephen Allen were constructed. In the years 1820 and 1821, the organization carried out extensive surveys in various US penal institutions and appointed a committee to evaluate the results. It was published in 1822 with the report The Penitentiary System in the United States and criticized the prevailing spirit of revenge in the treatment of prisoners and criticized the incarceration of people regardless of age and the severity of their crimes committed. The first major step was seen to be the establishment of a penal institution exclusively for young people. After the report was approved in 1824, planning for the construction of the reformatory began immediately. Although the New York House of Refuge was run on a private basis from the outset, the State of New York was involved in the organization, financing, admission regulations and the development of the treatment programs from the start. As a result, the offices of Managers of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents in the City of New York were introduced by the New York State Legislature in the same year . This was followed by a law in 1826 that allowed courts nationwide to bring authorized juvenile offenders and vagrants to the New York House of Refuge.

The members of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism elected a thirty-member board of directors consisting of five and later seven members who, as part of the Acting Committee, took care of political leadership. These political decision-making bodies met weekly and also elected a superintendent to be responsible for day-to-day administration. The matron, on the other hand, monitored the women's wing. Public funding was an early goal to run the reformatory. In 1825, the State Legislature decided to draw the money from legislative grants and the surpluses of poll tax for inbound transatlantic passengers and seafarers, as well as the proceeds from the license fees for New York taverns, theaters and circuses. These revenues were considered reasonable, as immigration, licentiousness and commercial entertainment were primarily responsible for juvenile delinquency. Subsequently, a private contribution enabled the purchase of a section of an old and abandoned federal arsenal in Manhattan in July 1824 for the expansion of the juvenile detention center. In addition, however, a few other locations within New York City were also used. For the later location on Randalls Island , the community acquired from the US federal government and the Government of New York US $ 125,000 (adjusted for inflation in 2015: US $ 3,085,875), which was used for the construction on the East River , which was completed in 1854 . The premises of the women's department, which were then mainly located in the right half of the building, were only adapted in 1860.

The reformatory itself was officially opened on January 1, 1825 with six boys and three girls, but recorded 1,678 inmates within the first decade. Two features distinguished the New York House of Refuge from its British predecessors. Children were admitted mainly for vagabonding in connection with minor offenses; Second, the children were indefinitely bound or sentenced by the New York House of Refuge so that the leadership could exercise authority over the underage inmates. Throughout the 19th century, the inmates consisted mainly of vagabonds and petty criminals, although these initially came from the entire state , but only from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries after the establishment of the Western House of Refuge in 1849 . Judicial District. This was officially passed during the 73rd New York State Legislature in 1850.

The inmates' daily routine consisted of hard work that was constantly monitored and aimed at educating and disciplining the youth. The management tried to keep the prison's operating costs lower through the work of the inmates. At that time, the products manufactured by the male inmates mainly included brushes, cane chairs, brass nails and shoes, while the female adolescents mainly sewed uniforms, worked in the laundry or did other household chores. A badge system was used in the institution to separate inmates according to behavior; this came into play in both the men's and women's departments. The training in the juvenile detention center included, among other things, literacy for the inmates, as well as Protestant religious instruction, which was given particular importance and from which non-Protestant clergy were excluded. In addition, the reformatory had the authority to assign the young people with training contracts to various local employers, whereby the agreement provided that the young people were constantly monitored by supervisors. Among other things, some young people were sent to sea, others, mostly male, but also some female young people, worked as utility and home workers on farms.

In the 1830s and 1840s, the New York House of Refuge was visited by public figures such as Alexis de Tocqueville , Frances Trollope and Charles Dickens . From the beginning, the educational institution served as a model for numerous subsequent juvenile prisons in other American cities. In 1857, when the institution hosted a major national boarders' meeting, it was also named the largest inmate reformatory in the United States. That same year, the New York State Senate Committee on Social Agencies boasted that the New York House of Refuge was now the largest reformatory in the world for the size of its operations.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Building the foundation for juvenile justice , accessed November 15, 2015
  2. ↑ Humanitarianism in the preindustrial City: The New York Society for the Prevention of pauperism, 1817-1823 in The Journal of American History , 1970, page 576, accessed on November 15, 2015

Coordinates: 40 ° 47 '42 "  N , 73 ° 55' 22.8"  W.