FEATURE--HISTORICAL VIGNETTE

Mettray

by THOM GEHRING

California State University, San Bernardino, USA

In 1840, near Tours, France, jurist Frederick Auguste Demetz founded Mettray, a family substitute institution for juveniles. Before opening Mettray, "Demetz trained 27 assistants for . . . seven months." (Eriksson, T. [1976]. *The Reformers: An Historical Survey of Pioneer Experiments in the Treatment of Criminals*. New York: Elsevier, 1976, p. 102). The institution was known as a school and employed teachers. Its curriculum consisted of "religion, philosophy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, French, Latin, Greek, German, English, writing, book-keeping, drawing, and music. . ." (Eriksson, 1976, p. 122). Mettray students were "from more or less wealthy social backgrounds," and they "left it reformed" (Eriksson, 1976, p. 123). In France, reforms in juvenile facilities took center stage around 1900. By that time, Mettray:

> had become almost military. . . the institutional population consisted of 325 boys sentenced for crimes, 99 who had been remanded for reformative Treatment (correction paternelle), and 25 who had been handed over . . . by affluent parents. . . . Each week the 'families' [groups of prisoners were assigned to a housing unit with a teacher(s) and called a family] had a good conduct competition, the winner being the one with the fewest penalties. The reward was an extra meal with meat and the best placing at institutional festivities. Fourteen different trades could be practiced, but the majority of pupils (a total of 253) did farm work. (Eriksson, 1976, p. 123).

Mettray closed in 1937. During its early years it had been the innovative French juvenile institution. Later Mettray had become "the focus of increasingly bitter public criticism." (Eriksson, 1976, p. 128).

**Thom Gehring** is the research director of the Center for the Study of Correctional Education at California State University, San Bernardino. His scholarly emphasis is on the history of correctional education and prison reform. He has been a correctional educator since 1972. Thom did his Ph.D. dissertation on the correctional school district pattern of organization. He serves as the historian for the Correctional Education Association. Thom is a professor of education who directs the EDCA correctional and alternative masters degree program.

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