Criminology, Prison Reform, and the Buenos Aires Working Class

Abstract

Criminology, Prison Reform, and the Buenos Aires Working Class Between 900o and 1920, positivist criminologists introduced important reforms into the Argentine prison system. Influenced by the work of Jose Ingenieros, who redefined crime as a moral-social-psychological pathology that could be treated and cured, a new group of experts and prison administrators organized the transformation of old repressive prisons into experimental clinics for the rehabilitation of inmates. Their finest achievement-the National Penitentiary of Buenos Aires-hosted a new disciplinary system that combined the most current trends in the science of punishment: the humanist positivism of the Italian School, and the methods of rehabilitation of leading penitentiaries and reformatories in the United States. Central to this disciplinary strategy was the use of confinement, redemptive work, elementary education, and religious instruction. Other methods borrowed from Europe and the United States, such as grading and the modification of sentences according to inmates' behavior, added to the novelty of the reform. The impetus of reform reached various institutions of the justice system in the capital-the police, the prison for indicted felons, the juvenile reformatories, and the courts-and swept the old, classical penology from university chairs and academic circles. In modifying the criminal code, the reform proved less impressive. The revised Criminal Code of 1920 supported positivist principles without completely eliminating the penalties advocated by the old penology. Similarly, prison facilities in the