Frédéric-Auguste Demetz (1796–1873) was a French penal reformer and

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...

. He toured the United States in 1836, together with the architect

Guillaume-Abel Blouet Guillaume-Abel Blouet (6 October 1795 – 7 May 1853) was a French architect who specialised in prison design. Biography Blouet was born at Passy. He won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1821 at the École des Beaux-Arts, entitling him to five years ...

, to study progressive American prison architecture and administration for the French Ministry of the Interior. Upon their return, they published a detailed and laudatory report.David T. van Zanten, "A French Architect in America in 1836" ''The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians'', 29.3 (October 1970), p. 255. The result was Blouet's appointment as ''Inspecteur général des prisons'' in 1838, and a

prison farm A prison farm (also known as a penal farm) is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are forced to work on a farm legally and illegally (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in the open air ...

for juvenile offenders at

Mettray Mettray () is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France. The Mettray Penal Colony was opened there in 1839. Population The inhabitants are called ''Mettrayens''. See also *Communes of the Indre-et-Loire department The fo ...

, on the outskirts of

Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 ...

, founded in 1839; it was conceived by both men and directed by Demetz, as a prison without walls, with the backing of the vicomte de Bretignières de Courteilles.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Demetz, Frederic-Auguste Penology 1796 births 1873 deaths Place of birth missing