This month’s Franklin Celebration in Philadelphia will be held Friday, January 18, 2019 (apologies for this late posting), and is entitled Liberty and Justice for All? Reforming America’s Criminal Justice System.

The Inquirer published an excellent Opinion piece by Bill Keller, What would Benjamin Franklin think of today’s criminal justice? on January 4, 2019.

UPenn’s Papers of the Prison Society have an online presence are introduced with this:

After the peace of 1783, a group of prominent Philadelphia citizens led by Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, and others organized a movement to reform the harsh penal code of 1718. The new law substituted public labor for the previous severe punishments. Reaction, however, against the public display of convicts on the streets of the city and the disgraceful conditions in the Walnut Street jail led to the formation of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (a name it retained for 100 years, at which time it became the Pennsylvania Prison Society) in 1787, the first of such societies in the world.

See Also:

• 2018 Morning Seminar (90-minute video).