Dorothea Dix: Prison And Asylum Reform

There has not yet been a point in time where every person agrees on something. There is people like Dorothea Dix didn't agree on the way that most prisons were being managed and how the people were being treated in those prisons. Instead of just saying she didn't agree she actually did try to do something about what was going on in the prisons. That's when the reforms come, the reform that Dorothea Dix was part of was the Prison and Asylum Reform. This is a very significant reform movement because it was important and helpful to the people back then and it continues being helpful to people now. Dorothea Dix is known for the start of the Prison and Asylum Reform. It started when she visited a prison to teach a class. The things she saw in that prison were just horrible and disgusting. In the prison she saw children mixed in with adult criminal, and women chained and locked up in cages. Basically, the women were being treated like animals. The mentally ill people were in crowded prisons cells and they would be punished if they would misbehave. Dorothea Dix wasn't the only one who wanted to change this, her in other believed that the mentally ill should be given treatment and they should be cared for. What Dorothea Dix wanted was to have public asylums, Massachusetts already had an asylum, but the problem was that it was private and only the wealthy could afford it. Dorotha Dix began going to different prisons and Massachusetts and continued to find for …show more content…
Now in the 21st century mentally ill people our more accepted in society. Help is more accessible for the people that really need it. There is a bad side to what is going on today, the asylums and prisons are still overcrowded it. In the past the main point of having people in prison was for people to have time to reevaluate themselves and then be released once again, now it seems like that is not even important for prisoners to become better