Hastings Hornell Hart
Hastings Hornell Hart was a notable child-welfare worker and prison reformer, born in Brookfield, Ohio, in 1855. He pursued an education that included degrees from the Cleveland Institute and Oberlin College, eventually becoming an ordained Congregational minister. Hart's early career as pastor in Minnesota transitioned into a dedicated focus on social service as he took on the role of secretary for the Minnesota State Board of Charities and Corrections, where he championed the reformatory approach to corrections.
From 1898 to 1909, he served as superintendent of the Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, contributing significantly to child welfare initiatives. Later, as director of the child-assistance department at the Russell Sage Foundation, he authored influential reports that guided child welfare practices. Hart's later work involved prison reform, during which he conducted investigations into various institutions and advocated for reforms to improve conditions and training for correctional staff. His commitment to transforming the penal system was underscored by his leadership roles, including the presidency of the American Prison Association. Throughout his life, Hart authored numerous publications on corrections and penology, leaving a lasting impact on the fields of child welfare and prison reform before his passing in 1932.
Hastings Hornell Hart
- Hastings Hornell Hart
- Born: December 14, 1851
- Died: May 9, 1932
Child-welfare worker and prison reformer, was born in Brookfield, Ohio, the son of Major Albert Gailord Hart, M.D., a Civil War veteran, and Mary Crosby (Hornell) Hart. The Hart family was descended from Stephen Hart, who moved from England to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1632 but later settled at Farmington, Connecticut.
Hart was graduated from the Cleveland Institute in 1867 and received his A.B. degree from Oberlin College in 1875. In 1885 he received an M. A. from the same institution. After receiving his A.B., he studied for the Congregational ministry at Andover Theological Seminary, from which he was graduated in 1880. Upon his ordination in 1880, he became pastor of a church in Worthington, Minnesota, but resigned in 1883 to devote himself to social service.
As secretary of the Minnesota State Board of Charities and Corrections (1883-1898), Hart implemented many important changes in the administration of prisons and the treatment of the delinquent as well as the insane. He was a fervent apostle of the then new reformatory approach to corrections, which allowed inmates to be released when they gave evidence of having changed their ways for the better.
From 1898 to 1909 Hart was superintendent of the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society, and also acted as secretary of the National Children’s Home Society, a federation of twenty-eight state groups. Equally important was his work with the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, later called the National Conference of Social Work, which he served as president in 1893.
Hart moved to New York City in 1909 to become director of the child-assistance department of the Russell Sage Foundation. His first report, Preventive Treatment of Neglected Children (1910), became a handbook for students and workers in the field. He also established a bureau for the exchange of information among children’s aid societies, out of which grew the Child Welfare League of America.
In 1924 Hart became the Russell Sage Foundation’s consultant on delinquency and penology. The new title reflected a change in his interests, away from child welfare to the questions of prison reform. During World War I, he investigated prisons and other public institutions in many southern states. His study in Alabama led the governor to recommend a reorganization of the tax system in order to provide more money for the state’s badly neglected educational, charitable, and correctional institutions. As president of the American Prison Association (1921-22), Hart visited eighty prisons around the country.
Heading the American Prison Association’s committee on jails (1926-27), Hart investigated federal prisons whose inmates he found to be badly overcrowded and subjected to poor food and sanitation. His reports led to a House committee investigation in 1929, as a result of which prison reform legislation was enacted. He found similar deficiencies in the penal institutions of New York City. On the basis of his report “The Present and Future Prison System of New York City” (1929), he was asked to develop projects that would help to rectify the most serious problems. He thus made a deep and lasting impression on the nature and organization of the city’s correctional system.
Hart was always careful to explain, both to government officials and to the public, that the ultimate goal of incarceration was not vindictive punishment but the protection of society. When an inmate was released, society would be most effectively protected only if the inmate had been reformed during his sentence, in ways that would “make him a good citizen or, at least ... tend to deter him from unsocial acts.” Transforming prisoners into good citizens, however, was not possible unless the correctional administrators and staff were trained and dedicated to their work. Thus Hart stressed the need for professional schooling and in 1929 helped San-ford Bates, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, organize a school for prison officers in conjunction with the federal detention center in New York City.
For two five-year terms Hart was a vice president of the International Prison Congress (1925 1935). He received LL.D. degrees from Oberlin College in 1898 and from Wilberforce University in 1915 and was awarded the Roosevelt Medal for distinguished service in 1930.
Hart married three times. He wedded Mary Amanda Prosser in 1880; they had one son, William Prosser. Mary Hart died in 1881, and in 1886 he married Laura Eveline Love, of South Hadley, Massachusetts; they had four children: Laurance Hastings, Hornell, Helen Love, and Frances Jeannette. In 1902, two years after the death of his second wife, he married Josephine Mary Newton, of Springville, Utah; their children were Elizabeth Haven and Albert Gailord. Hart died at his home in White Plains, New York, at the age of eighty.
Hart’s numerous publications, consisting mainly of reports on state and local prison systems, include The Restoration of the Criminal (1923) and Penology an Educational Problem (1923). The fullest account of his life is the article in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 23 (1933), which cites all Hart’s published works. See also The Dictionary of American Biography, supplement 1 (1944). An obituary appeared in The New York Times, May 10, 1932.