James V. Bennett

Who was James V. Bennett?

James Van Benschoten Bennett was a leading American penal reformer and prison administrator who served as director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 1937 to 1964. He was Assistant Director of the Bureau to Sanford Bates prior to this from 1930-1937. A U.S. Army Air Corps veteran of World War I, he became an Investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Efficiency in 1919 and in 1928 authored "The Federal Penal and Correctional Problem" whilst there which called for a new centralized prison bureau which led to the creation of the Bureau of Prisons.

Bennett was of the view that prisons had become inhumane and poorly operated and that extensive reform was needed. From as early as 1939 he was a strong critic of the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. During the 1950s he was one of the strongest advocates in the movement in persuading Congress to close Alcatraz and replace it with a new maximum-security prison, eventually successful in 1963 when it closed. He was also a prominent member of numerous U.S. delegations to the International Penal and Penitentiary Congress and the United Nations' Congress on the Prevention of Crime and President of many institutions such as the National Association for Better Broadcasting and American Correctional Association, and was chairman of the American Bar Association Section on Criminal Law.