I grew up in a prison town, adjacent to their corn and cattle fields. It began about 1910 as a reformatory where Wash DC convicts would be sent to rural Lorton

I grew up in a prison town, adjacent to their corn and cattle fields. It began about 1910 as a reformatory where Wash DC convicts would be sent to rural Lorton and taught working trades, from brick making to farming. I've been reflecting how this and similar prisons all (AFAIK) elapsed into the same dismal hellholes that 19th century sanitariums did. Eventually reformers die and are replaced by politically driven, officious beancounters.