Thomas Mott Osborne.

About Thomas Mott Osborne

Thomas Mott Osborne was an American prison officer, prison reformer, politician, industrialist, and New York State political reformer. In an assessment of Osborne's life, a New York Times book reviewer wrote: "His career as a penologist was short, but in the interval of the few years he served, he succeeded in revolutionizing American prison reform, if not always in fact, then in awakening responsibility.... He was made of the spectacular stuff of martyrs, to many people perhaps ridiculous, but to those whose lives his theories most closely touched, inspiring and often godlike."