REFORMATORY

correctional institution for the treatment, training, and social rehabilitation of youth. Institutions designated as reformatories are of two general types: residential training schools for school-age delinquents and facilities for the confinement of youthful offenders between the ages of 16 and 25 who have been convicted of criminal acts. The early reformatories, originally intended to reform criminal youth, did not fulfill the enthusiastic expectations for them; many still resemble junior prisons, with rigid discipline and little treatment. Reformatories, or correctional training schools, as they are often called, have been operated according to various theories of treatment. The earlier ones aimed to reform the offender through discipline. More recent approaches have emphasized education, individual psychotherapy, group therapy, and resocialization. Although the older systems, with their emphasis on military drill, punitive calisthenics, and cadet officers, have fallen into disrepute, there is little agreement among current schools of thought as to the effectiveness of any approach. They generally concur, however, in the importance of some form of aftercare for inmates upon their release.