Frédéric-Auguste Demetz

Frédéric-Auguste Demetz (1796–1873) was a French penal reformer and jurist.^[1] He toured the United States in 1836, together with the architect Guillaume-Abel Blouet, 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.^[2] The result was Blouet's appointment as Inspecteur général des prisons in 1838, and a prison farm for juvenile offenders at Mettray, on the outskirts of Tours, 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.

Notes

1. Frédéric-Auguste Demetz. (2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 16, 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online
2. 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.