Davis, Katharine Bement1860╨1935penologist, social worker and writerBorn on January 15, 1860, in Buffalo, New York, Katharine Davis grew up there, from 1863 in Dunkirk, New York, and from 1877 in Rochester. She graduated from the Rochester Free Academy in 1879 and for ten years thereafter taught high school science in Dunkirk. In 1890 she entered Vassar College as a junior, and after graduating in 1892 she pursued further studies at Columbia University. In the summer of 1893 she served as director of the New York State Exhibit of a model workingman╒s home at the World╒s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. From that year until 1897 she was head resident at the St. Mary╒s Street College Settlement in Philadelphia. In 1897 she undertook doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, and after work there and at the universities of Berlin and Vienna she received her Ph.D. in economics in 1900. In January 1901 Davis began work as superintendent of the newly opened state reformatory for women at Bedford Hills, New York. Over the next 13 years the institution became famous for its actively experimental approach to penology. Davis instituted a prison farm, courses in various vocational subjects, and a cottage system. She was particularly interested in identifying various classes of reformable, habitual, and incorrigible offenders, and her work in that field induced John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to establish a Laboratory of Social Hygiene on property adjacent to the reformatory in 1912 to further such research. In 1909, during a European trip, she won international acclaim for her work in organizing self-help relief programs following a disastrous earthquake in Messina, Sicily. In January 1914 Davis was appointed commissioner of corrections for New York City by the newly elected reform mayor, John Purroy Mitchel. She was the first woman to hold a top-level post in the government of that city. She moved quickly to improve conditions in the city╒s 15 penal institutions, especially to suppress drug traffic, segregate women prisoners, and upgrade dietary and medical facilities. A riot at the Blackwell╒s Island prison in the summer of 1914 was quelled mainly by her intelligent handling of the situation. She established the New Hampton Farm School for delinquent boys and laid plans for a separate detention home for women (ultimately opened in 1932). In 1915, principally as a result of her efforts, the New York legislature enacted a program of indeterminate sentencing and parole supervision, and in December of that year she was named first chairman of the city parole board to direct the new system. She held the post until the end of the reform administration in 1918. From 1918 until her retirement in 1928 Davis was general secretary and member of the board of directors of the Bureau of Social Hygiene, the department of the Rockefeller Foundation that had operated the Bedford Hills laboratory. There she directed research into narcotics trade and addiction, the ╥white slave trade,╙ various forms of delinquency, and other aspects of public health and social hygiene. During World War I she headed the women╒s section for social hygiene of the Commission on Training Camp Activities, and after the war she made a European tour of inspection for the Young Women╒s Christian Association and helped raise relief funds. In 1929 she published Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-two Hundred Women; she was also author of a great many articles in professional and popular journals. She died in Pacific Grove, California, on December 10, 1935. ■styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ " 5¬ H !I Ä 5¬ Å !I ½ 5¬ ¼ !I
