New York City judge Peter Townsend Barlow graduated from Harvard College in 1879 and studied law at Columbia Law School, graduating in 1881. In 1903 he was appointed as a New York City magistrate, overseeing the women's night court in Manhattan. Interested in the social conditions afflicting the poor, Barlow served as president of the Florence Crittenton Home, an organization assisting women in New York City. This collection includes court documents and correspondence relating to Barlow's work as magistrate.

Burstein was the first woman appointed to the New York State Commission of Correction; appointed in 1955, she served until 1961. In 1961 Burstein founded Services for Prisoners' Aid in Nassau; the organization eventually also included Suffolk County. She also helped establish the first school in the Nassau County Jail. She was elected to the District Court in Nassau County in 1962, and to the Family Court in 1968. In 1972, she was elected to the Supreme Court of the State of New York, 10th Judicial District, where she served until her retirement in 1991. Burstein lectured and wrote widely on youth and family problems and was active in many organizations, including the International Federation of Women Lawyers and the Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children.

In 1930, Massachusetts became the first state to appoint women to the state police, and Lotta Caldwell and Mary Ramsdell were the first women to serve. They did not wear uniforms, nor could they visit a crime scene unless accompanied by a male. Caldwell covered the southern and eastern part of the state and focused on crimes related to women and girls, such as those crimes involving rape and juvenile delinquency. She remained on the force for ten years. Casebooks and daily reports included in this collection capture the rhythms of Caldwell's work, provide insight into the social mores and what was considered criminal for women and children during this period, and offer commentary on the people she interacted with on her cases.

Tia Cross is a committed community activist, believing that society must confront the issues of racism, classism, and homophobia in order to effect real and lasting social change. In 1978 Cross became an active member of the Bessie Smith Memorial Production Collective, which saw itself as a catalyst for women becoming actively involved in the issue of racism within the women's movement in the Boston area. In 1979 she founded Cross Cultural Communications, which brought anti-racist, anti-homophobic workshops and classes to several businesses and community organizations. In 1988 she founded the Multi-Cultural Council of Vermont, creating a non-partisan, activist communications center that would provide both educational resources and leadership for community organizing. Cross was also instrumental in bringing feminist studies classes and lectures to the women incarcerated at the Chittenden County Correctional Center in Vermont.

Scholar, author, and black feminist philosopher Angela Yvonne Davis is one of the most recognized political activists of the 1960s and 1970s. She rose to national attention in 1969 after being removed from her teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles, for her membership in the Communist Party at the urging of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan. In 1970 Davis was prosecuted for purchasing firearms used in the armed takeover of a Marin County courtroom. Her arrest sparked an international campaign to gain her release and led to a high-profile trial which culminated in her acquittal in 1972. She was the vice presidential candidate for the Communist Party of the United States in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Davis is an advocate for prisoners' rights and a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex. She writes and lectures on social injustice, social movements, and the intersections of race, gender, and class.

Simone Weil Davis teaches in the English department at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She participates in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, a national project that offers college-level courses to groups of students, half of whom are incarcerated and half of whom are college students from "outside." This collection consists of Inside-Out in Hampden County, vols. 1-3, collections of writings by women incarcerated in Hampden County, Massachusetts, and women enrolled at Mount Holyoke College.

The Temporary Asylum for Discharged Female Prisoners was incorporated on 30 April 1864, its object being "to provide shelter, instruction, and employment for such women as have been discharged from the Correction Institutions of the State, and who, with a desire to reform, have no home but the abode of vice and misery." Located in Dedham, Massachusetts, the asylum came into existence largely through the efforts of Hannah Balch Chickering, who, through her experience as a "self-appointed visitor, librarian, and chaplain" to women at the Dedham Jail, was convinced of the "imperative need" to prepare inmates for their return to society while they served their sentences. Instruction was given at the asylum in "all branches of domestic service and needlework" and in the basic elements of a "common school education," and arrangements were made to find employment for the inmates after leaving the asylum.

Ethel Dummer, a philanthropist and social welfare leader, joined the National Child Labor Committee and the Chicago Juvenile Protection Association, was a founder and trustee of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, and gave the funds to establish the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute. She also provided financial support to El Retiro School for Girls, a detention home in Los Angeles directed by Miriam Van Waters, as well as to social science research. Additionally, she worked with prostitutes and unwed mothers and published several books, including an autobiography. See also Additional Papers of Ethel Sturges Dummer.

An author, critic, lesbian, and radical feminist, Dworkin was arrested in 1965 in New York City for protesting against the Vietnam War and spent four days in the Women’s House of Detention. She later made headlines, publicizing her brutal treatment at the hands of staff, which led to a grand jury investigation of the prison. See also the audiotape collection of Andrea Dworkin, which includes a statement Jayne Stamen made from prison retelling her history of sexual abuse at the hands of her husband and explaining why she had him murdered.

Ehrmann’s husband, Herbert Brutus Ehrmann, served as counsel for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti during the closing years of their trial. Following their 1927 execution, Sara Ehrmann devoted much of her life to working to abolish capital punishment statewide as well as nationally. Best known for her work in establishing the 1951 "Mercy Law" in Massachusetts, which allowed juries to opt out of the death penalty on first-degree murder cases, Ehrmann served with the Massachusetts Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty as executive secretary and president, and with the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment, first as executive director and then as vice president. Ehrmann worked with a number of local and national organizations, including the League of Women Voters of Brookline (Massachusetts), the Women's City Club of Boston, Boston Y.W.C.A., Friends of Framingham, United Prison Association of Massachusetts, and the American Jewish Committee.

A social reformer, Evans was involved in prison reform, support of striking workers, the Massachusetts campaign for the first minimum wage act for women, the movement for women's suffrage, and the peace movement. She was a contributing editor and financial supporter of La Follette's magazine and the Progressive, and national director of the American Civil Liberties Union (1920-1937).

In 1973, Donna Finn co-founded the Families and Friends of Prisoners and the related Massachusetts Coalition for Alternatives to Prisons. These two groups worked to keep the families of prisoners together and to educate the larger community about the impact of prisons and juvenile institutions on families. In 1979, Finn helped form the Dorchester Women's Committee in order to build an ongoing women's organization that reflected the composition of the Dorchester community in regards to race, class, nationality, and age. In 1994, the group opened the Center for Neighborhood Women and Girls, which enabled the Dorchester Women's Committee to expand the resources they offered for women and girls in the community.

This collection is closed while being digitized.
The Friends of Framingham, Inc., was formed in 1948 in support of Miriam Van Waters and the progressive methods she had implemented as Superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at Framingham, with emphasis on rehabilitation of women prisoners rather than on punishment. An attempt was made to remove Van Waters because of alleged irregularities at the reformatory, but she was cleared of all charges. Friends of Framingham worked on development of rehabilitation methods, public education in penology, and improving the practices of government agencies concerned with the accused or convicted. In 1964 it established a halfway house and a Friendly Visitors program. See also Additional Records of Friends of Framingham, Inc.

Ilse Gay wrote an account of her grandmother's life entitled Love and Skisskes fr Mother: A Family's History (2013) in which she described the poverty, alcoholism, and crime afflicting the family which led to the incarceration of her grandmother, Minnie Morrell Jenkins, for forgery in 1929. She served her time in a number of jails, including Harlem Prison, Welfare Island, and Raymond Street Jail. This collection contains a copy of the manuscript as well as materials relating to Minnie Morrell Jenkins.

This collection has been digitized. Please see the Gladding finding aid for access.
In 1932, Anna Spicer Gladding began a 42-year association with the Reformatory for Women in Framingham, Massachusetts, where she was involved in the mother-child program and served as prison librarian, organist and choir director, and leader of the literary and nature study clubs. She also directed theatrical productions and was the head of the prison's volunteer organization known as the Friendly Visitors. Miriam Van Waters was superintendent of the Reformatory for Women (1932-1957). Her liberal views on penal reform brought her both praise and condemnation. In January 1949 she was fired because of alleged administrative failings, such as condoning lesbianism among the "students" (as she called the prisoners) and failing to supervise a work-release program properly. After a lengthy hearing process she was reinstated. Van Waters was the author of Youth in Conflict (1925) and Parents on Probation (1927). She also served as director of El Retiro (1919-1920), a school for delinquent girls in California; referee for the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court (1920-1930); consultant for the Wickersham Commission (1928-1931); and on a number of other boards and commissions. See also Papers of Miriam Van Waters.

Emma Goldman, an anarchist, writer, lecturer, and agitator for free speech and radical causes, was born in Kovno, Russia, and immigrated to the United States in 1885. She joined the anarchist movement and soon became a public speaker for the cause. While editor of Mother Earth (1906-17), she published anarchist pamphlets and books, including her own Anarchism and Other Essays (1911). Goldman also lectured on the radical drama of Ibsen, Shaw, and Strindberg and wrote The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (1914). In 1917 Goldman and Alexander Berkman were arrested for conspiracy to obstruct draft registration. They were found guilty and sentenced to prison (1918-1919). Three months after their release in 1919 they were deported to Russia. Throughout the rest of her life, Goldman continued to lecture on drama and politics and was an active supporter of the Spanish Republican cause.

A supporter of woman suffrage and a volunteer for the American Red Cross, Fanny Hall was also very active in the prison reform movement in Ohio, serving as chair of the Courts Committee of the Women's City Club of Cleveland and as treasurer of the Ohio Committee on Penal Conditions. In 1923, she was the first woman to serve as foreman of a grand jury in the United States. Hall was also a board member of the Legal Aid Society and the Consumers' League of Ohio. In 1926 she moved to New York City, where she was an investigator for the Emergency Work Bureau. She was also a frequent visitor to the Reformatory for Women at Framingham. This collection includes "The True Story of Virginia," an article Hall published in The Witness in 1962 about a resident of the Reformatory for Women.

Jessie Donaldson Hodder, penologist, was a matron at the State Industrial School for Girls at Lancaster, Massachusetts (1906-1908), an associate of Dr. Richard Cabot in social service work in Boston (1908-1910), and Superintendent of the Massachusetts Prison and Reformatory for Women at Sherborn (1911-1931). This collection consists of Hodder's correspondence with her son Alan; with Elizabeth (Mrs. Glendower) Gardiner Evans, particularly concerning Evans's involvement with the Sacco-Vanzetti case; and with others. It also includes Evans's diary for 1915, 1919, and 1920.

The Society (originally called the Massachusetts Society for Social Hygiene) was founded in 1911 "to help people understand and manage sex in its relation to health, good citizenship, marriage, parenthood, and family life." Initially it focused on medical and protective measures to combat venereal diseases, but in 1928 it reorganized, putting greater emphasis on education. It also worked to eliminate prostitution and pornography and was affiliated with the American Social Hygiene Association (later the American Social Health Association). Some of the women active in the Society or employed by it were Maida (Herman) Solomon, Dorothy W. Miller, Miriam Van Waters, and Eva (Whiting) White.

A socialist, lecturer, and prison reformer, O'Hare opposed United States participation in World War I and was indicted and found guilty under the Espionage Act. She was sentenced to five years in the Missouri State Penitentiary and served one, April 1919--May 1920. This collection consists of a volume of mimeographed letters to her family during her incarceration, in which O'Hare discusses conditions of life and work in the prison; her family, friends, and fellow inmates (one of whom was Emma Goldman); politics; books; the psychology of women and developments in psychoanalysis; and her religious and political beliefs.

A lawyer and judge, Polier was counsel in the Workmen's Compensation Division of the New York State Department of Labor (1928-1935). She was Judge of the New York State Family Court (1935-1973), where she pioneered the treatment method of juvenile justice. Among her achievements were improvements in shelters for neglected children, detention centers for delinquents, foster homes, and youth centers, and expanded mental health services for children in the court. A champion of civil rights, she initiated legal cases to combat segregated juvenile facilities and schools.

Born in Cornwall, England, and educated at Bella Vista College, Amy P. Row left a position at the East London Children's Hospital around 1909 and traveled for five years through Europe, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, spending two years teaching and doing missionary work among the Maoris in New Zealand. She later moved to Massachusetts and taught arts and crafts at the Reformatory for Women in Framingham, first as a volunteer and then as a staff member (ca. 1932-1940).

Ethel Hobart Rowse was a friend of penologist and reformer Miriam Van Waters, who served as superintendent of the Reformatory for Women in Framingham, Mass. (1932-1957). This collection consists of materials relating to a production of King Lear performed at the Framingham Reformatory for Women in 1945 and a printed pamphlet entitled "The Van Waters Case" published by the Friends of the Framingham Reformatory in 1949.

The Rutland Corner House was organized in 1877 as the Home for Working Women, where "women desirous of making an honest living, but penniless and friendless, may find shelter and employment until able to secure a permanent position." In 1925 its current name was adopted. Inmates, who had to be poor, respectable, and able to work, were usually referred to the House through social agencies, although some were accepted directly from the streets. During the 1920s the House population was increasingly made up of "undesirable" women. This change continued into the 1950s when inmates included unmarried mothers, psychiatric cases, persons discharged from hospitals, young runaways, and court cases. In 1953 the board of managers voted to turn the House into a transitional residence for women psychiatric patients.

Schechter was involved in the battered women's movement and helped to organize the first battered women's shelter in Chicago. In 1978 Schechter left Chicago and moved to New York City. For a short while, she worked for the Family Abuse Project at the Henry Street Settlement, leaving this position to become coordinator of children and youth development services at the Park Slope Safe Homes Project in Brooklyn, New York. In 1991, Schechter took a position as clinical professor at the University of Iowa School of Social Work. This collection includes materials on the relationship between women in prison and domestic violence.

Caroline Klein Simon received her law degree from the New York University School of Law in 1925. She served as a commissioner on the New York State Workmen's Compensation Board and as Commissioner of the New York State Commission Against Discrimination and of the State Youth Commission before becoming Secretary of State of New York State in 1959. She was the second woman to hold the office, serving until August 22, 1963. From late August 1963 to 1971, she sat as a judge on the New York State Court of Claims. She was actively involved in many organizations, including the American Jewish Committee, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the National Council of Women of the United States, the United Nations, and Freedom House. She published articles on discrimination, prisoners' rights, jury service, youthful offenders, the problems of women in society, and other subjects, and also spoke frequently on these topics.

Founded in 1975 by women students and staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sojourner was a monthly feminist periodical that evolved from a small MIT women's newspaper to a national forum for feminist analysis of news, opinion, the arts, and women's creative writing and poetry. By the 1990s, Sojourner prided itself on being a vital link for the feminist community, including those marginalized women who were living on welfare or incarcerated. Inside/Outside: Sojourner's Women in Prison Project was an advocacy program for women inmates. Originally coordinated by the Gay Community News, Sojourner took over the project in 1999, publishing a criminal justice column, providing free subscriptions to inmates, helping incarcerated women gain access to other advocacy organizations and resources, and managing a pen-pal program that generated hundreds of letters from female and male prisoners on various topics.

This collection is partially digitized.
Doris Stevens became active in the suffrage movement in 1913, when the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which became the National Woman's Party, hired her. In 1917 she was one of the women arrested while picketing the White House for women's suffrage. She was sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan Workhouse, but was pardoned by President Wilson after three days. Stevens was a paid organizer for the National Woman's Party through 1920, at which time she published her book Jailed for Freedom, which described the imprisonment of women activists in 1917. Stevens continued to be a member of the National Woman's Party for the next thirty years and served the party in various capacities: as vice president, as chair of the Committee on International Action, and as a member of the National Council.

Switzer worked for the Department of the Treasury, principally for the Public Health Service and the Federal Security Agency, until 1953. In 1950 she was appointed Director of the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (which became the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration in 1963) and oversaw its move to the new Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare in 1953. In 1967 she became the first administrator of the Social and Rehabilitation Service, and upon retirement in 1970, became vice-president of the World Rehabilitation Fund. Switzer served as an advisor to many American health organizations, including the Menninger Foundation, and participated in international health associations. This collection includes information on the National Advisory Council on Correctional Manpower and Training.

This collection has been digitized. Please see the Van Waters finding aid for access.
Van Waters, a penologist, was superintendent of the Reformatory for Women in Framingham MA (1932-1957). She was also director of El Retiro, a school for delinquent girls in California (1919-1920); referee for the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court (1920-1930); director of the juvenile delinquency section of the Harvard Law School Crime Survey (1926-1930s); consultant on juvenile delinquency for the Wickersham Commission (1928-1931); and secretary of the American Youth Commission (1935-1941). When Van Waters succeeded Jessie Hodder as the superintendent of the Reformatory for Women at Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1932, her progressive penal policies included: emphasizing psychological treatment, allowing mothers to keep their children with them, and broadly interpreting the Massachusetts indenture system to allow for more day work. During her tenure there, several state officials, along with local newspapers, launched critical attacks on Van Waters and her policies. After hearings in 1948, Van Waters was dismissed in January 1949. She was then reinstated by a governor's commission in March 1949, following further hearings and much publicity. She served as superintendent until her retirement in 1957. See also Papers of Anna Spicer Gladding and Miriam Van Waters.

The Vocational Adjustment Bureau (VAB, or Vocational Adjustment Bureau for Girls) began in 1919 as the Committee on Vocational Guidance and Employment, a part of Jewish Big Sisters. By 1922 the demand for guidance and placement services had grown so much that the committee was reorganized into VAB, a city-wide, non-sectarian organization under the direction of Blanche Ittleson (1875-1975). Among its purposes were: "to conduct investigations into vocational opportunities for sub-normal and maladjusted girls; [and] to conduct a placement bureau for them." VAB provided training workshops, employment in its own workshops, placement services, and psychological and vocational tests. VAB’s clients included girls who were on probation or otherwise in the juvenile justice system.