Corrections_Today_January_February_2024_Vol.86_No.1

NEWS&VIEWS

CORRECTIONAL CHAPLAIN PERSPECTIVES

Pendulum swings in New York State Corrections From pig farming to truck driving By Hans Hallundbaek D ealing with wrongdoers has varied widely throughout human history. From ancient the soil, raised pigs, harvested ice in the winter and eventually were hired out into the surrounding community for housework and to tend vegetable gardens at local homes. Soft skills gradually swung away from the re formatory model and became one of “serving the time.” In the 1960’s the pendulum swing accelerated. Enacted in 1973,

times we have reports of offenders being thrown off a cliff to their death for minor offences. In recent history, penalties for wrongdoing have varied from tough to soft, from punitive to restorative. Over time we have seen a multitude of models applied. New York State is no exception, with dramatic pendulum swings in the last one hundred and twenty years. In 1901, the New York State es tablished a Reformatory for Women in the small Township of Bedford in bucolic northern Westchester County, where farming and vegetable gardens around people’s homes were still the norm. Train service was recently introduced, making it convenient to send women out of town, who in the rapidly growing, bustling city of New York thirty miles to the south, had fallen into crime or “ill repute.” Stories from now deceased old timers still linger, recalling as town events the frequent arrival of small groups of new reformatory residents who were being driven from the new train station through town in open horse carriages to the fence less facility. Here in a soft approach, they were introduced to learning the value of physical labor. They worked

like music, art, and theater were considered important parts of the curriculum, and as some of the old photos will show, the living accom modations were exemplary. With a rapidly increasing influx of residents, the reformatory eventually suffered from overpopulation and was taken over by New York State Department of Correction in 1926, and over the decades the pendulum

the Rockefeller Drug Laws man dated lengthy prison sentences for people convicted of a range of felony drug offenses, heralding a wave of mandatory sentencing that led to overcrowding and double bunking. As the last of the drug laws became repealed in 2009, the prisoner popu lation slowly diminished. However, during the height of the incarceration boom in the

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8 — January/February 2024 Corrections Today