Norfolk’s “Model Prison Community”: Howard Belding Gill and the Social Process of Prison Reform

• DOI: 10.1177/0032885521991074
• Date: 01 March 2021
• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885521991074

The Prison Journal

2021, Vol. 101(2) 127 –146

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DOI: 10.1177/0032885521991074

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Article

Norfolk’s “Model Prison

Community”: Howard

Belding Gill and the

Social Process of Prison

Reform

Matthew DelSesto1

Abstract

This article explores the social process of criminal justice reform, from

Howard Belding Gill’s 1927 appointment as the first superintendent

of the Norfolk Prison Colony to his dramatic State House hearing and

dismissal in 1934. In order to understand the social and spatial design of

Norfolk’s “model prison community,” this article reviews Gills’ tenure as

superintendent through administrative documents, newspaper reports, and

his writings on criminal justice reform. Particular attention is given to the

relationship between correctional administration and public consciousness.

Concluding insights are offered on the possible lessons from Norfolk Prison

Colony for contemporary reform efforts.

Keywords

criminal justice reform, correctional history, prison administration

Introduction

When Howard Belding Gill became the first Superintendent of the Norfolk

Prison Colony in November 1927, one of his first administrative actions was

1Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Matthew DelSesto, Sociology Department, McGuinn 410D, Boston College, 140

Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.

Email: delsesma@bc.edu

991074TPJXXX10.1177/0032885521991074The Prison JournalDelSesto

research-article2021

128 The Prison Journal 101(2)

to scrap the existing building plans and seek planning recommendations from

both correctional officers and the newly founded “inmate council.” Gill dis-

liked the conventional fortress and panopticon-style prison architecture.

For him, the errors of this architecture were most egregiously evident in

Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary (Gill, 1933). Notably, he believed

that the nation had gone on reproducing this initial model even as experience

with that model over 100 years—from the 1820s when Eastern State was con-

structed to the 1920s—had clearly proven its failure. Gill notes that he was

expected to oversee the construction of something like the panopticon-style

(in the 1898 plan for a Massachusetts prison, that Gill saved in his notes,

pictured in Image 1), but, instead, he favored a more community-oriented

design (1934 Norfolk prison map shown in Image 2).

Gill’s diagnosis of the conventional prison’s problems was twofold. First,

it promoted solitary isolation of prisoners. This isolation was problematic for

Image 1: Photocopies of 1894 Massachusetts prison plans and maps, circa

1970s-1980s. Howard Belding Gill Papers, 1912-1989, Archives and Manuscripts

Department, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.