Publication Draft – SSCH – 2004 Intended Practice: The Curriculum at the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women, 1932-1957 Dominique T. Chlup Texas A&M University Abstract: This paper discusses the role of women inmates as historical agents active in curriculum development at the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at Framingham during the 1930s, 40, and 50s. Explored are the educational programs and practices established for and by women inmates in the Era of Reformatory-Prisons. The historical legacy of these programs and practices are then discussed in view of the lack of contemporary programming available at MCI-Framingham. Ann’s1 eyes skimmed the catalog’s course offerings…journalism, playwriting, psychology, biology, piano lessons, beginner’s English. Her eyes widened as she thought of all of the possibilities. How would she find the time to take them all? Rivaling the curriculum to be found at any of the women’s colleges located throughout the Northeast, this particular institution prided itself on the fact that it was modeled after one of the oldest and most prestigious of women’s colleges in Massachusetts— Wellesley College, which was chartered in 1870 and opened its doors in 1875. Only this institution was not a school in the traditional sense. Rather it was the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at Framingham.2 The school Ann was readying herself to enter the next morning was a prison school. Of the eighteen prison-reformatories opened for women between 1877 and 1933 in the United States, Framingham was one of the most committed to providing educational programs for its inmates. In a criminal justice system where a gendered application of the law was in effect that disproportionately arrested women and girls for crimes against morality, the unique educational programs and practices implemented by Superintendent Dr. Miriam Van Waters, the staff, and the inmates, themselves, allowed the justice these women received to be an educative one.3 Educative Justice meant that the women could step outside of their role of gendered “prisoner” and participate in the role of academic learner. It was the intended practice of the prison superintendent and staff to foster an environment where inmates could participate in the role of academic learner. Historically, with a few exceptions, the portrayal of prisons and women’s experiences in those prisons has been bleak. Early women’s prison histories claim that educational programs were one of the few places of inspiration and genuine good work in women’s reformatories. Contemporary women’s prison histories debate this finding and revise the historical lens through which we look at prisons. I believe that the legacy of the women’s reformatories is complicated and complex enough to allow for both of these histories. I maintain that while the early histories may have focused too narrowly on the “good” intentions of educational programs, later histories focus too narrowly on the negative outcomes of the “good” intentions. I would argue that the history of the women’s reformatory movement is a rather complex and complicated one, and it is only by investigating both the transformative experiences women had in the reformatories and the limitations of those experiences that a comprehensive portrait of women’s reformatories begins to develop. When the first women’s prison opened in the United States in the 1870s, education was valued as the tool to be used toward reformation and rehabilitation.4 Curiously, despite the indication that education was uniquely at the foundation of women’s penal reform, no modern scholarship has been devoted to this topic. In light of this neglect, this paper explores the nexus between the Era of women’s prison reform and the subsequent curriculum development. It was these programs which intentionally allowed for the practice of inmates to initiate and contribute to the prison curriculum. The central research questions this paper addresses are: What input did student inmates have on the curriculum at the Reformatory, what educational ideas did they articulate, and how were students able to initiate and respond to the development of their education? The historical legacy of these programs and practices are then discussed in view of the lack of contemporary programming available at MCI-Framingham.5 This paper is based on a historical study and as such relies on methods of historical inquiry. This study is based on the manuscript collections at the Schlesinger Library (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study) of Framingham Reformatory’s Superintendent Dr. Miriam Van Waters, Framingham prison art teacher Amy Paddon Row, and prison staff member Anna Spicer Gladding. I use both primary and secondary sources to explore my research questions. Primary sources include empirical studies conducted by social scientists during the time period, published newspaper accounts of Framingham, selected articles from the Journal of Correctional Education (1949- 2004), periodicals, including prisoner produced periodicals, and archival sources such as class reports, student-inmate reports, library holdings, prison policy reports, newspaper accounts, the writings of individual prisoners, and 2,699 inmate case files held at the Mass State Archives. Secondary sources I consulted, which provide a larger context for my study include the biographies of the female superintendents of women’s prisons, literature on the history of prison education, literature on the history the women’s prison reform movement, literature on the history of delinquency 8 and rehabilitation of women and girls, and the literature on Progressive Era social reforms. This historical study is significantly different in its focus from previous scholarship on prison reform as it is focuses on women and girls’ prison education programs and looks at the work and lives and roles of student inmates who both shaped and were the subjects of progressive educational ideals and reforms. Although a number of historians and legal scholars have studied the history of prisons and prison reform in the United States, In 1935, the Framingham superintendent’s report documented that out of 296 women inmates 250 were enrolled in the voluntary school classes. 6 no one has yet examined the curriculum in these all-female institutions from the prisoners’ point of view or investigated the role played by prisoners in the outcome of particular reforms. Thus far, the literature often reduces prisoners to passive beings who benefited from reformer’s humanitarianism or suffered at the hands of anti-educational forces; little of it investigates the consciousness of prisoners and the consequential effects on educational programming.7 My research in this area suggests that the educational programs at the Framingham Reformatory were progressing in vital and important ways late into the 1950s, over twenty years after prison historians claimed that the prison reform movement had exhausted itself. While reformatory-prisons are often deemed to have remained prisons at heart,8 the Framingham Reformatory’s educational classrooms were spaces in which inmates could “forget lock and key” and operate as students rather than inmates. The director of the Boston Children’s Museum wrote of one classroom at the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women as a place where they “forgot time and locks” and found “inspiration and real encouragement to try again.”9 The Framingham Reformatory for Women was seen as a “place, not for punishment, but for reformation, training, and treatment. A place of comfort and dignity, where discipline is tempered with kindness and understanding.”10 In 1870, at the Cincinnati National Prison Congress, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes [later the 19th President of the United States] welcomed a host of 130 wardens, chaplains, judges, and humanitarians to Ohio to begin the work that in essence would later be termed the beginning of this country’s reformatory movement.11 The National Prison Congress, which would later change its name in 1955 to the American Correction Association, first convened in order to professionalize prison management and encourage humane prison conditions. Another one of its purposes was “to transform prisons into schools.” The delegates adopted a “Declaration of Principles.” Principle Ten dealt specifically with correctional education. X. Education is a vital force in the reformation of fallen men and women. Its tendency is to quicken the intellect, inspire self-respect, excite to higher aims, and afford a healthful substitute for low and vicious amusements. Education is therefore, a matter of primary importance in prisons, and should be carried to the utmost extent consistent with the other purposes of such institutions.12 13 By 1940, twenty-six classes were offered. This number would continue to grow into the late 1950s and included classes in the visual arts, beginners’ English, poetry, biology, typing, Bible study, metal craft, arithmetic, folk dancing, and a Biography class run by the superintendent’s mother.14 This did not include the correspondence courses, which were procured for the University Extension Division of the State Department of Education, and at one time 50 classes alone were being offered in this way, nor did it include the various clubs.15 All of the clubs met weekly and were designated for specific purposes. For instance, the 36 members of the Merry Makers Club were all African Americans, whose purpose in meeting was to “encourage the interest of the members in the leaders in their race—books are read about the lives of outstanding [Negro] men and women.”16 Other clubs included the Garden Club, Glee Club, Barn Club, Parole Club, the Two-Sided Club,17 the Good Fellowship Club, the Mothercraft Club, Junior Council, and the Birthday club, which threw a birthday party for all the women in the institution who celebrated a birthday during that month. Another group of students comprised the editorial board of the Harmony News, which was the student run periodical that was in operation for over twenty years. The subscription base extended beyond the reformatory as many community members also subscribed to the news magazine. In a span of twenty- five years [1932-1957], 90 different classes would be offered and 14 different clubs. When Framingham opened its doors in 1877, it only met some of the original goals of the prison reform movement. Rather than cottage-like housing facilities, which reformers advocated, a large stone edifice adorned the center of the thirty acres of land designated for buildings.18 Inmates were prohibited from talking at all, and if they passed another inmate in the corridor, “one of the two had to stand and face the wall with her arm over her eyes until the other had passed.”19 Framingham, also called Sherborn because its land spilt over into the town of Sherborn, was located thirty miles west of Boston in a pastoral setting on 333 acres of land; this met with the reformers’ approval.20 When the Reformatory first opened, other conditions also met with the reformers approval. The windows had no bars, white linens adorned the mattresses, and women who earned privileges were 9 allowed to decorate their cells. But the most unique feature was the nursery, where infants brought with their mothers or born while their mother was at the institution stayed until they were two. While reformatory nurseries did exist elsewhere in the country, few were as well-known as Framingham’s. The administration considered Framingham to be a child-centered institution where “parent-education [was] not limited to the mother-child relationship, but included individual development and achievement.”21 The legacy of the moral reform campaign against prostitution was still in effect during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, as it was these crimes against chastity that many unwed mothers and pregnant girls had been locked up for committing; these were crimes for which their male partners never received penalties. Recognizing that a gendered application of the law, which linked women’s deviancy and criminality to their sexuality in a way that men’s was not, the academic educational programs and practices at Framingham did allow women the opportunity to develop and foster a gender consciousness that operated outside of the normed prison system. In large part, this was accomplished by the student- inmates, themselves, who initiated and contributed to the educational curriculum. In conjunction with the prison staff and superintendent Miriam Van Waters, the inmates had the possibility to make their time at Framingham educative. Dr. Miriam Van Waters accepted the superintendency of Framingham in 1932 and stayed for 25 years, the longest tenure of any female superintendent before or since. Thought to resemble a college president more than a prison warden,22 she sought to reframe institutional life by suggesting that the institution was a school—albeit a reformatory— rather than a prison. One of the most impressive ways in which she accomplished this was by calling her first assembly to inform the prisoners that she was changing their collective title from “women,” the term the former superintendent Hodder had used, to the term “students.” She officially banned the term “prisoner.”23 The students at Framingham often spoke glowingly of the educational opportunities they were afforded at the Reformatory. One inmate whose piece “Frustration, or…” appeared in the Harmony News, Framingham’s student-run and produced news magazine and literary journal (the piece was then reprinted in the men’s prison magazine Agricola) described how the reformatory acted as place where she could receive an education that she would not have received otherwise. Now that I am here, I have completed a short story course, two years of English, and a short course in Basic Psychiatry. I would never have taken the time to do this outside, and through doing these things, I have found that I can do things I never knew I could do.24 Another inmate in a letter entitled, “For my daughter when she reaches an age of understanding,” iterated the importance of passing on the value of education. She stressed the need for her daughter not to take for granted her early schooling since this would teach her right from wrong and respect for others. She advised her to pick friends who she would be proud to bring home and to “stay away from the ones that have no ambition and don’t like school.”25 Since the educational programs were not compulsory, except for in the cases of illiterates, the Education Department was proud that they maintained an average of 75-80% of all the women participating in some portion of the program.26 Foreign students were not the only ones found to be illiterate, but so were the younger girls “whose migratory families have been unable or unwilling to keep them in schools.”27 Given the variety of choices, it was easy for inmates to find at least one course they wanted to take. The curriculum was not set, but instead, Director Weinberg changed the classes from year-to- year based on student interest and teaching staff availability.28 What was consistent from year-to-year was the value placed on education: “We stress education from the time of the introductory class, which is a form of orientation while students are in isolation, until the day the student leaves the institution.”29 Not only was education in terms of classes stressed, but the department endeavored “to use all of the teaching potentialities of our staff and student body, thus providing a well rounded, integrated program of wide variety.”30 This meant that inmates did teach their own classes. For example, one inmate taught a painting on glass class. Not only was it an educational endeavor, it was a profitable one as the inmates sold their own wares: “The activity is set up on the same financial basis as the weaving; that is, it is self-supporting, does work by order, using donated materials or those brought with profit from sales.”31 The inmates initiated and responded to the curriculum as they saw fit. Students took on several unique leadership roles in the reformatory. For instance, they ran the monthly student assemblies at which students from each of the reformatory’s departments gave progress reports. They also wrote and produced their own plays. One such play, “Reunion,” performed in June of 1948, was a portrayal of institution life from the day of admission to the day of discharge. The play was written with the larger community in mind. Students invited members of the community to the play and used it as a teaching performance, offering community members the chance to see institutional life from the prisoner’s perspective. One visitor, Irja Kanttii, a European visitor from Finland, likened the 10 student run assemblies to “a student government meeting at any American College.”32 Sitting in the dining room, Kanttii felt as if she were “back in my college dining-room, for everything was conducted very much like a boarding school.”33 During World War II, a staff shortage gave several inmates the opportunity to hold positions of staff duty.34 These “outstanding students” held jobs running the sewing room, the laundry, the cannery, and one was given “full charge of [the] Institution.”35 Framingham also hired ex-offenders for staff positions, another policy that came under attack during the Van Waters’ investigation.36 For instance, the Assistant Superintendent Margaret (Peggy) O’Keefe had served time for a juvenile offense. The storekeeper, switchboard operator, and two of the female reformatory officers also had arrest records.37 This was exceptional then and now to find in a prison setting. Inmates have been allowed to work as teacher aides, but the case of inmates managing their own classrooms and occupying staff positions seems to be unique to Framingham. Kathy Boudin, an inmate until the summer of 2003 at Bedford Hills in New York State, for a brief time did teach her own literacy class. In writing about her experience, she describes that administrators limit the amount of responsibility inmates can possess in a classroom so as to limit their independence; it is part of the social control of prisons.38 The Framingham education department’s policy, rather than ensuring its control over the lives of students, respected the lives of the women and the knowledge they could share with their fellow students. They saw them as more than prisoners. These women could also be educators. Nellie Doughton one of the agricultural instructors saw the educational endeavor with her students as a shared one. She poignantly describes the educational process she had been through with her students: “We were climbing; we fell back, but always we climbed again with a bit more strength and hope for in climbing and in falling our feet touched the earth.”39 Unfortunately, these same opportunities do not exist for today’s prisoners. In the past, the prison educational programs were paradoxical in the ways they could be both liberating and confining. Today’s lack of academic programming make women’s prisons simply confining. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 87% of state and federal prisons offer some form of educational programming for inmates, but most women do not take advantage of these opportunities.40 According to criminologist Chris Rose, there has never been an instance between 1979 and 1997 (the last year of her study) where the majority of female prisoners were participating in some form of educational programming.41 In fact, the number of participants has declined from 49% in 1986 to 30% in 1997.42 Rose cites structural/policy changes and individual prisoner motivations to explain these changing patterns. One such structural change was the passing of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1993 and the Higher Education Reauthorization Act of 1994 in response to Clinton Administration’s move to get “tough on crime.” The Acts, which repelled Pell grant funding for prisoners enrolled in prison college programs, effectively eliminated almost all prison college programs (from 350 in 1994 to 7 in 2003),43 prisoners who may have been able to benefit from an authentic educational experience have been denied one.44 Former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Warren Burger once observed that prisoners should be allowed to learn their way out of prison. A surprising advocate of correctional education programs, this conservative Justice, who served on the Supreme Court during the 1970s, felt that prisoners were entitled to education programs. He felt it was an injustice not to try and rehabilitate inmates while they were in institutional care. He saw educational and vocational training as vehicles through which to accomplish this. Since Chief Justice Burger left office, the prison rate has more than tripled. Prison Programming for Women is virtually non-existent. Women on average spend 17 hours a day locked inside their cells with one hour a day outside for exercise. Men spend on average 15 hours a day in their cells with 1.5 hours outside. The same system holds inmates, administration, and staff accountable in ways that foster an emphasis on moving toward prepackaged curriculums and standardized assessment instruments. The educational assessments, including the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE) or the Basic English Skills Test (BEST and/or BEST plus) and a self- scoring Occupational Interest Survey are administered to all incoming inmates. The curriculum has shrunk from 90 classes to 8: Adult Basic Education (ABE), Communications lab (designed for graduates of the English as a Second Language (ESL) level 4 and have a diploma in their native language or the General Equivalency Diploma (GED), ESL, GED, Pre-GED, Mandatory Literacy, and Special Education. This focus on basic education and literacy development presupposes an understanding that entering inmates are all of a certain educational attainment level. While college programs are offered through Boston University, in order to participate, inmates must have a minimum of 30 transferable credits. Education classes as a personal investment in oneself or for the active engagement of democratic communal learning are no longer the norm at Framingham. Instead, Framingham follows a model where classes are used “to maintain order by keeping prisoners occupied at seemingly meaningful work.”45 Prison administrators engage in the “new penology” 11 whereby mandatory correctional education classes are used to control idleness and manage risk. Framingham is no longer a place to question prison authority, politicize prisoner action, or challenge the power structures of dominate culture. Nor is it a place where women inmates are afforded “equality of rights, opportunity, and treatment.” 46 The Educational Programming Department is now called the Division of Inmate Training and Education. The emphasis is now placed upon inmates who can “make a positive contribution to an increasingly more technological society.”47 The current prison administration’s emphasis is on “competency, development of basic literacy skills, and the acquisition of salable skills along with an appreciation of the work ethic.”48 There is hope though for the pendulum is beginning to swing. According to a recent report, Current Issues in Correctional Education: A Compilation and Discussion, in the last decade there has been a shift away from the “lock them up” mentality: “In general, attitudes have begun to turn back from punishment to rehabilitation with more emphasis being placed on education in corrections.”49 However, the same report found that “public policy depends on both legislator opinion and current economic conditions at any time.”50 In 1940, a wise student at the Reformatory for Women at Framingham described the meaning of a democracy. She wrote, “According to its ideal, a democracy wishes to save every human being. There is to be no scrap heap. No one is to be cast aside; no one is to be defeated.”51 Her words remind us that by living in this democratic society we have an obligation to our prisoners for there is no “scrap heap.” They deserve education not because they are prisoners but because our educational system has for the most part failed them. These inmate’s words also remind us that the issues we are fighting today are historical in scope. These problems are ubiquitous and not unique to current times. There is a traceable legacy that offers us lessons and perspectives into our current crisis and hidden within these records are instructions of what it is possible to do and what should not be done again. The example of the Reformatory for Women at Framingham honors those instructions by demonstrating for us in terms of the history of women’s correctional curricula all that can be accomplished when the intended practice is an educative one. REFERENCES Boudin, Kathy. “Participatory Literacy Education behind Bars: AIDS opens the Door.” Harvard Educational Review 63.2 (Summer 1993): 207- 232. Bularzik, Mary J. Sex, Crime, and Justice: Women in the Criminal Justice System of Massachusetts, 1900-1950. Unpublished dissertation, Brandeis University, 1982. Cox, William B., F. Lovell Bixby, and William T. Root, eds. Handbook of American Prisons and Reformatories Volume I, 1933. New York: Osborne Association, National Society of Penal Information, and The Welfare League Association, Inc., 1933. Davidson, Howard. Schooling in a ‘Total Institution’: Critical Perspectives on Prison Education. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1995. -----. “Control and Democracy in Adult Correctional Education,” in Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education, ed. Arthur L. Wilson and Elisabeth Hayes. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000. Feinman, Clarice. Women in the Criminal Justice System, 3d ed. New York: Praeger, 1994. Freedman, Estelle B. Their Sisters’ Keepers: Women’s Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981. -----.Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. Gaither. The Journal of Correctional Education 33.2 (June 1982): 20. In Thom Gehring, “Vignette: 1870 Principle #10, on the importance of Correctional Education.” The Journal of Correctional Education 46.2 (June 1995): 59. Garrett, Paul W., and Austin H. MacCormick, eds. Handbook of American Prisons and Reformatories, 1929. New York: National Society of Penal Information, 1929. Gehring, Thom. “Special Edition on the History of Correctional Education.” The Journal of Correctional Education. 46.2 (June 1995): 38- 83. Haynes, Fred E. The American Prison System. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1939. Justice, Benjamin. “ ‘A College of Morals’: Educational Reform at San Quentin Prison, 1880- 1920.” History of Education Quarterly 40.3 (Fall 2000): 279-301. Kurshan, Nancy. “Women and Imprisonment in the U.S.: History and Current Reality.” Online posting http://prisonactivist.org/women/women- and-imprisonment.html, 2002. Lee, Marian Jeena. Bad, Mad Women: Rehabilitation and Resistance at a Women’s Reformatory. Unpublished undergraduate thesis, Harvard University, 1999. MacCormick, Austin H. The Education of Adult Prisoners: A Survey and a Program. New York: The National Society of Penal Information, 1931. Massachusetts Department of Correction Inmate Programs Description,” updated 23 Feb. 2005, . http://prisonactivist.org/women/women-and-imprisonment.html http://prisonactivist.org/women/women-and-imprisonment.html http://www.mass.gov/doc/PROGRAMS/Eductrng.htm http://www.mass.gov/doc/PROGRAMS/Eductrng.htm 12 Rafter, Nicole Hahn. Partial Justice: Women in State Prisons, 1800-1935. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985. Rose, Chris. “Women’s Participation in Prison Education: What We Know and What We Don’t Know.” The Journal of Correctional Education 55. 1 (March 2004): 78-100. Row, Amy Paddon Papers. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard University. Cambridge, Mass. Spangenberg, Gail. Current Issues in Correctional Education: A Compilation and Discussion. Washington, D.C.: Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy, 2004. Tewksbury, R. and J.M. Taylor, “The Consequences of Eliminating Pell Grants Eligibility for Students in Post Secondary Correctional Education Programs.” Federal Probation 60: 3. Van Waters, Miriam Papers. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. -----. Superintendent’s Annual Report for the Year Ending 1936. Boston, MA: Department of Correction, 1936. Welsh, Michele F. “The Effects of the Elimination of Pell Grant Eligibility for State Prison Inmates.” The Journal of Correctional Education 53.4 (December 2002): 154-158. Wines, Enoch. Transactions of the National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline (Albany, NY: Argus Press), 542. In Thom Gehring, “Vignette: 1870 Principle #10, on the importance of Correctional Education.” The Journal of Correctional Education 46.2 (June 1995): 59. 1 Inmate pseudonym. 2 Throughout the course of this paper the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at Framingham is referred to as the “Reformatory,” the “Massachusetts Reformatory for Women,” the “Framingham Reformatory for Women,” the “Framingham Reformatory,” or simply “Framingham.” All of these titles are used as names to reference the institution throughout the historical literature. 3 It was the uniqueness of the Framingham programs that piqued my interest in studying the institution. In 2001, during personal correspondence with Historian Estelle Freedman she informed me that the Framingham Program, while possibly paralleling a few other women’s reformatories at the time, was rather unusual. She wrote, “The MVW [Miriam Van Waters’] educational, as well as spiritual, mission was pretty unique.” Estelle Freedman, personal correspondence to the author 13 April 2001. 4 Austin H. MacCormick, The Education of Adult Prisoners (New York: The National Society for Penal Information, 1931), 292. 5 The name was officially changed from the Women’s Reformatory at Framingham to Massachusetts Correctional Institution (MCI)—Framingham in 1956 and demonstrated an increasing emphasis on corrections as opposed to re-forming inmates. 6 Estelle Freedman, Their Sisters’ Keepers: Women’s Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981), Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women in State Prisons, 1800-1935 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985), Clarice Feinman, Women in the Criminal Justice System (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), Thom Gehring, “Special Edition on the History of the Field of Correctional Education,” Journal of Correctional Education 46.2 (June 1995): 38-39; Benjamin Justice, “ “A College of Morals’: Educational Reform at San Quentin Prison, 1880-1920,” History of Education Quarterly 40.3 (Fall 2000): 279-301. 7 Howard Davidson, Schooling in a ‘Total Institution’: Critical Perspectives on Prison Education, (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1995). 8 Rafter, Partial Justice; Freedman, Their Sisters’ Keepers; Mary J. Bularzik, “Sex, Crime, and Justice: Women in the Criminal Justice System of Massachusetts, 1900-1950” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1982); Marian Jeena Lee, “Bad, Mad Women: Rehabilitation and Resistance at a Women’s Reformatory” (senior thesis, Harvard University, 1999); Nancy Kurshan, “Women and Imprisonment in the U.S.: History and Current Reality,” (cited Dec. 26, 2003). 9 Mildred E. Manter to His Excellency, the Governor, Oct. 29, 1940, box 1, folder 7, Amy Paddon Row papers (hereafter referred to as APR papers), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Cambridge, Mass. (hereafter referred to as SL). 10 Lynne B. Plummer, “The History of Framingham Reformatory,” unpublished manuscript, 1957, p. 1, box 23, folder 263, Miriam Van Waters papers (hereafter referred to as MVW papers), SL. 11 Gaither, The Journal of Correctional Education 33.2 (June 1982): 20. Quoted in Thom Gehring, “Vignette: 1870 Principle #10, on the importance of Correctional Education,” The Journal of Correctional Education 46.2 (June 1995): 59. 12 Enoch Wines, Transactions of the National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline (Albany, NY: Argus Press), 542. Quoted in Thom Gehring, “Vignette: 1870 Principle #10, on the importance of Correctional Education,” The Journal of Correctional Education 46.2 (June 1995): 59. 13 Miriam Van Waters to the Commissioner of Corrections, “Reformatory for Women at Framingham http://prisonactivist.org/women/women-and-imprisonment.html http://prisonactivist.org/women/women-and-imprisonment.html 13 Superintendent’s Report,” Dec. 31, 1935, p. 1, box 1 file 19, APR papers, SL. 14 Evelyn K., “Education,” Harmony News, Aug.-Sept. 1940, p. 8, box 1, folder 15, APR papers, SL . 15 William Cox, F. Lovell Bixby, and William Root, eds., “Reformatory for Women, Framingham, Massachusetts,” Handbook of American Prisons and Reformatories Volume I, 1933 (New York: Osborne Association, National Society of Penal Information and The Welfare League Association, Inc., 1933), 367. See also Fred Haynes, The American Prison System (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1939), 105; Paul Garrett and Austin MacCormick, eds., Handbook of American Prisons and Reformatories, 1929 (New York: National Society of Penal Information, 1929). 16 Amy P. Row, “Framingham Reformatory Clubs,” n.d. [1939], p. 1, box 1, folder 10, APR papers, SL. 17 Members of the Two-Sided Club were elected from the student body to debate and discuss with Dr. Van Waters administrative policies and institutional changes they wished to see happen at Framingham. 18 Estelle Freedman, Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 185. 19 Dorothy K., “Progress,” Harmony News, Sept. 1939, p. 2, box 1, folder 19, APR papers, SL. 20 William, B. Cox, F. Lovell Bixby, and William T. Root, eds., Handbook of American Prisons and Reformatories Volume I, 1933. 21 “A General Description of the Institution as a Whole,” [report administered to new staff members] n.d. [archivist note says after 1936], box 21, folder 238, MVW papers, SL. 22 Louis Lyons in Boston Globe, 28 Dec. 1931, box 31, folder 406, MVW papers, SL. 23 Elizabeth Borton, “Inmates Get ‘Student’ Status at Framingham Reformatory: Supt. Van Waters Bans Term ‘Prisoner’ for 250-odd women there,” Boston Herald, 24 October 1932, n.p., box 31, folder 406, MVW papers, SL. 24 Inmate Writing, “Frustration, or…,” contained in letter from Reverend Clarence Swearingen to MVW, Oct. 6, 1954, box 24, folder 279, MVW papers, SL. 25 Inmate Writing, “For my Daughter when She Reaches an Age of Understanding,” Nov. 1953, box 30, folder 393, MVW papers, SL. 26 Ruth Weinberg “Education,” n.d., box 24, folder 266, MVW papers, SL. 27 Miriam Van Waters, Superintendent’s Annual Report for the Year Ending 1936, (Boston, MA: Department of Correction), 48. 28 Callahan Report, “Education Department, Miss Ruth Weinberg, Director,” n.p. 29 Ruth Weinberg, “Education,” n.d., box 24, folder 266, MVW papers, SL. 30 Ibid. 31 Callahan Report, “Painting on Glass, Inmate Teacher,” n.p. 32 Irja Kantti, “Rehabilitation of Human Lives in an American Reformatory for Women,” April 1950, p. 4, box 23, folder 254, MVW papers, SL. 33 Ibid., p. 2. 34 This would be one of the policies challenged by the Commissioner of Correction during the investigation and subsequent firing and rehiring of Superintendent Van Waters in 1948-1949. 35 Miriam Van Waters to Mrs. Lewis S. Thompson, “Framingham Report,” Jan. 24, 1945, p. 2, box 16, folder 191, MVW papers, SL. 36 In 1949, a new Commissioner of Correction Elliot McDowell dismissed Van Waters from the superintendency following an investigation headed by Frank Dwyer that charged her with overstepping her authority, hiring ex-convicts, condoning homosexual activities among inmates, and allowing women to participate in day work. The subsequent trial brought Van Waters to national prominence. She appealed her case to the governor, and many of her friends, some quite famous, rallied to support her. Estelle Freedman covers this topic extensively in her biography of Van Waters. See Freedman, Maternal Justice, 274-312. 37 MVW to Commissioner Elliot McDowell, June 7, 1948, box 17, folder 195, MVW papers, SL. 38 Kathy Boudin, “Participatory Literacy Education behind Bars: AIDS opens the Door,” Harvard Educational Review 63.2 (Summer 1993): 207-232. 39 Nellie C. Doughton to MVW, Mar. 19, 1948, box 16, folder 194, MVW papers, SL. 40 Chris Rose, “Women’s Participation in Prison Education: What We Know and What We Don’t Know,” The Journal of Correctional Education 55. 1 (March 2004): 78-100. Given what I know of contemporary prison programming women, it is hard to believe that this figure is as high as 87%, but what is believable is that substantial barriers do exist that keep women from participating in correctional education programs. 41 Ibid., 80. 42 Ibid., 80-81. 43 Jeannette Hanlon, personal conversation with the author, 6 June 2004. See a further discussion of the effects of the elimination of Pell Grants see Michele F. Welsh, “The Effects of the Elimination of Pell Grant Eligibility for State Prison Inmates,” The Journal of Correctional Education 53.4 (December 2002): 154- 158; R. Tewksbury and J.M. Taylor, “The Consequences of Eliminating Pell Grants Eligibility for Students in Post Secondary Correctional Education Programs,” Federal Probation 60.3: 60-63. 44 Rose articulates that cutting Pell grant funding is just one piece of the puzzle. Other explanations to explain the pattern of women’s participation in correctional educational programming include: a 344% increase in the number of incarcerated women 14 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999), which puts more pressure on the prison services that are already inadequate and substandard; inadequate health and medical services; separation from their children, which results in increased anxieties and in turn influences their mental health. See Rose, “Women’s Participation in Prison Education”, 85-87. 45 Howard Davidson, “Control and Democracy in Adult Correctional Education,” in Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education, ed. Arthur L. Wilson and Elisabeth Hayes (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 393. 46 Ibid. 47 Massachusetts Department of Correction Inmate Programs Description,” updated 23 Feb. 2005, (cited 23 Feb. 2005). 48 Ibid. 49 Gail Spangenberg, Current Issues in Correctional Education: A Compilation and Discussion (Washington, DC: Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy, 2004), 5. 50 Ibid. 51 Inmate Writing, “As the Page Turns,” Harmony News, Jan.-Feb. 1940, box 1, folder 17, APR papers, SL. http://www.mass.gov/doc/PROGRAMS/Eductrng.htm http://www.mass.gov/doc/PROGRAMS/Eductrng.htm