When the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project (2023) endeavored to study the ‘oldest’ women’s prison in the United States they pointed not only to the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls––the oldest state penitentiary built exclusively for women––but the Home of the Good Shepherd in Louisville, Kentucky. The Home of the Good Shepherd, run by the Catholic Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, reformed and incarcerated ‘fallen’ women and girls in the U.S. as early as 1843. Good Shepherd Homes predating women or girls’ carceral institutions became a pattern throughout many states in the U.S., particularly as U.S. empire spread west. In 1883, the sisters opened a Home of the Good Shepherd in Denver, Colorado, the first in the Western United States. By 1900, there were two more Good Shepherd Homes in the West, located in Seattle, Washington and Helena, Montana, starkly contrasting to the seventeen institutions in the East and Midwest United States. All three institutions opened their doors within a few years of statehood and preceded the construction of state institutions for the incarceration of girls in their respective locations. The Good Shepherds in the West operated in collaboration with the state to incarcerate wayward girls before these structures existed at the state level. In this sense, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd played an important role in state-building in the West. For example, preceding the construction of the Colorado State School for Girls in 1896, all incarcerated girls in the state were sent to the Home of the Good Shepherd. Despite recognizing that the reliance on the Good Shepherds for carceral infrastructure violated the Colorado constitution, which prohibited the state funding of religious institutions, the governor continued sending girls convicted of crimes at the county and state level to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. The collaboration of church and state, although tenuous, was normalized and even supported by Protestant reformers for the purpose of incarcerating wayward women and girls. Because of this, fallen girls and women became wards of both the state and the Sisters. More importantly, perhaps, state carceral institutions for girls were built in relation to the Good Shepherds, constructed from the bedrock already built by the Sisters.
States and the federal government at the turn of the 19th century show an uncharacteristic willingness to rely on Catholic institutions, despite legislation like the Blaine Amendment being pushed at the federal level in the 1870’s and western states’ constitutions being written to include ‘little Blaine amendments’ that exclude religious institutions from receiving state funds. At the center of this collaboration is the mission of incarcerating children––non-Native children by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd and Native children by other Catholic sister-run institutions. This paper will frame the construction of girls’ carceral institutions in the West as arising from the precarious collaboration of the Catholic church and of state governments, while placing the Sisters of the Good Shepherd within the larger context of the federal government’s reliance on Catholic sisters to run boarding schools for Native children. I consider the Sisters of the Good Shepherd as a way to understand the complex landscape of church and state relationships as essential to state-building in the Western United States. Taking an anticolonial and abolitionist perspective, I ask the following questions: What role does the incarceration of girls and women play, by both the Good Shepherd and the state, in the expansion of U.S. empire and state-building? How did the Sisters of the Good Shepherd support and interrupt the expansion of state carceral institutions for girls and women––that enforced a Protestant sexual and familial morality––in the Western United States? How can the Sisters of the Good Shepherd be understood within the landscape of U.S. church and state relationships, particularly in relation to the federal governments funding of Native boarding schools run by Catholic sisters? Where and when were western states willing (or not willing) to rely on the Catholic church for state-building and the geographic expansion of U.S. empire?
Homes of the Good Shepherd, run by the Catholic Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, reformed and incarcerated ‘fallen’ women and girls in the U.S. as early as 1843, making it the first institution in the nation to exclusive incarcerate women and girls. The Good Shepherds in the Western United States operated in collaboration with the state to incarcerate wayward girls before structures existed at the state level, showing an uncharacteristic willingness by western states to rely on Catholic institutions for state-building. This paper frames the construction of girls’ carceral institutions in the West as arising from the precarious collaboration of the Catholic church and of state governments, while placing the Sisters of the Good Shepherd within the larger context of the federal government’s reliance on Catholic sisters to run boarding schools for Native children.