1 For such a view of education I rely on Lawrence Cremin's expansive definition: “the deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, evoke, or acquire knowledge, values, attitudes, skills, and sensibilities, as well as any learning that results from that effort, direct or indirect, intended or unintended,” as cited in American Education: The Metropolitan Experience (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), x. I also thank Cremin for the term paeadia.Google Scholar

2 The one significant exception is The New York State Reformatory at Elmira, under Zebulon Brockway. See Rothman, David J. Conscience and Convenience (Boston: Little Brown, 1980), 32–36.Google Scholar

3 See in particular, Mennel, Robert M. Thorns and Thistles: Juvenile Delinquents in the United States, 1825–1940 (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1973), which links institutional reform to changing conceptions of childhood and Schlossman, Steven L. Love and the American Delinquent: The Theory and Practice of “Progressive” Juvenile Justice, 1825–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). From 1880–1920, the number of inmates under 18 years of age at San Quentin fluctuated between 1 and 2 percent of the total. On women's institutions, see Freedman, Estelle B. Their Sister's Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830–1930 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981), and Rafter, Nicole Hahn Partial Justice: Women in State Prisons, 1800–1935 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985). Although there was a tiny women's department at San Quentin, its inmates were kept separate from the rest of the population—virtual prisoners within the prison. While their story is valuable in its own right, this essay only includes the women's department as it touched on the more general educational reforms at the prison, which was seldom. Anne Butler's Gendered Justice in the American West: Women Prisoners in Men's Penitentiaries, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997) offers a gendered analysis of the type of experience that women had at San Quentin, though it does not specifically cover California prisons.Google Scholar

4 California State Board of Prison Directors. Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1880 (Sacramento: State Printer, 1880), 1.Google Scholar

5 Bookspan, Shelley A Germ of Goodness: The California State Prison System, 1851–1944. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 37–40; Wines, Enoch The State of Prisons and Child-Saving Institutions in the Civilized World [1880] reprint (Montclair: Patterson Smith, 1968).Google Scholar

6 Friedman, Lawrence Crime and Punishment in American History (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 77–80, 159–166.Google Scholar

7 As cited in Henderson, Charles R. (ed.), Correction and Prevention (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910), vol. I, 24.Google Scholar

8 Katz, Michael B. The Irony of Early School Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), chapter 3.Google Scholar

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11 “Report of the Moral Instructor” in Prison Directors, Report for 1880, 51–52.Google Scholar

12 “Report of the Moral Instructor” in Prison Directors, Report for 1882, 67–68; “Report of the Moral Instructor” in Prison Directors, Report for 1883, 49.Google Scholar

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14 Directors, Prison Report for 1894, 7. On anti-Chinese discrimination, see Lamott, Kenneth Chronicles of San Quentin: The Biography of a Prison (New York: D. McKay Co, 1961), 139. Saxton, Alexander The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California [1971] reprint (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).Google Scholar

15 “Report of the Moral Instructor” in Prison Directors, Report for 1892, 40.Google Scholar

16 Directors, Prison Report for 1886, 6. There is no evidence of any formal education for female inmates in this period.Google Scholar

17 Mennel, Thorns and Thistles, chapter two; Schlossman, Love and the American Delinquent, 105–123.Google Scholar

18 As a later governor would note, in the first thirteen years after the passage of the parole law only 304 prisoners enjoyed the privilege. See Senate, California State “Biannual Address of the Governor of California,“ Senate Journal (1907), 23.Google Scholar

19 Mennel, Thorns and Thistles, 78–80. August Drahms, The Criminal: His Personnel and Environment (New York: Macmillan, 1900).Google Scholar

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25 Lowrie, Donald My Life in Prison (London: John Lane, 1912), 111. One inmate described Drahms as “a parasitical sniveling hypocrite, a grafter and traducer of hopes of unfortunate convicts” (cited in Lamott, Chronicles of San Quentin, 129). There is also some evidence that the administration had wanted to fire Drahms for years but could not because of his status as a Civil War veteran. See Lowrie, 111.Google Scholar

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37 The chaplain never specified whether these were through the University of California or the letter-box courses described below.Google Scholar

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41 Ibid. For vocational education in the Progressive era, see Grubb, W. Norton and Lazerson, Marvin “Education and the Labor Market: Recycling the Youth Problem,” and Harvey Kantor, “Vocationalism in American Education: The Economic and Political Context, 1880–1930,“ both in Kantor, Harvey and Tyack, David B. (eds.) Work, Youth, and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on Vocationalism in American Education (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

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53 Directors, Prison Report for 1916, 143. This emphasis on individualized treatment of the inmate was a common Progressive-era reform. (See Rothman, Conscience and Convenience, ch. 2).Google Scholar

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71 Tannenbaum, Frank “Prison Facts,“ The Atlantic Monthly 128: 5 (November 1921), 577–588.Google Scholar

72 “San Quentin Prison—A College of Morals,” newspaper article cited in The Bulletin (published at San Quentin), Vol. 6, No.1, Oct. 1918, 9. The title of the Los Angeles paper was not given.Google Scholar

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