The International Penal and Penitentiary Congress (1910) and the Indeterminate Sentence

Abstract

Some seventy-five years ago Dr. Enoch Cobb Wines, then secretary of the Prison Association of New York, issued a call to penal lawyers and prison administrators throughout the world to sit down to discuss problems mutually interesting to them all. Wines received his inspiration from the Russian, Count Wladimir Sollohub, director of the Moscow prison, who had written suggesting that an international forum be developed to discuss penal and penitentiary matters. After a great deal of hard preliminary work on the part of Dr. Wines the first London Congress convened in 1872. Subsequent Congresses have been held at Stockholm in 1878; Rome in 1885; St. Petersburg in 1890: Paris in 1895; Brussels in 1900; Budapest in 1905; Washington in 1910; London in 1925; Prague in 1930; and in Berlin in 1935. The traditional five year interval was broken during the two world wars. A Congress had been called for Rome in 1940 but had to be abandoned.