Reforming

Introcuction

The molding of minds was, as we will see, one of the central purposes of incarceration practices which were heavily negotiated in the time after World War II. Many people believed that it was necessary to reform the prison system – especially for juvenile prisoners – so it would be better suited to the need of reforming the minds of offenders.

Mind control discourse in the trace of reforming meandered between the treatment of prisoners’ minds and experiments on their brains, between attempts to (re)integrate offenders and their removal from social participation.

In the field of reforming we can trace the ambiguities of the mind control discourse and follow its cultural negotiations of freedom and control. We can see how the discursive framework of mind control could be employed by different political fractions with different political ends.