Scope and Contents: The Garret Heyns Collection houses the personal papers of Garret Heyns. This collection, which dates from 1913 – 1991, consists of correspondence, speeches, articles, reports, clippings, scrapbooks, and one 35mm film, evidencing Heyns’s career as a penologist. The material provides insight into the civil service reform efforts in Michigan during the mid 20th century, the development of education during the first half of the century, prison reforms, vocational training, and the status of penology.
The ‘Biography, Incoming Correspondence, 1935-1969’ series consists of biographical sketches of Garrett Heyns as well as over 30 years of correspondence. This series also contains correspondence and materials related to Heyns’s 1936-1937 and 1939-1940 candidacy for Michigan’s 5th district. Other topics documented by correspondence in this series include Heyns’s major career transitions as well as his retirement and condolences after his death. Heyns’s personal accounts of the years 1937-1957 are included in this series. The ‘Outgoing Correspondence’ series is much smaller than the previous series but covers the same time period.
The ‘Correspondence from and about Inmates’ series contains correspondence between Heyns and inmates from Michigan and Washington. Two other prison employees’ correspondence are also included in this series. This series provides insight into the prisoners’ experiences. The prisoners express their frustrations and desires in the correspondence and interviews with Heyns.
The ‘Date Books’ series is composed of Garrett Heyns’s datebooks from the years 1930 – 1969.
The ‘Awards, Obituaries, and Eulogies’ series contains the materials described in the title and notably includes Calvin College’s first Distinguished Alumni Award. These materials speak to Heyns’s achievements and legacy.
Though the bulk of the collection documents Heyns’ career as a penologist, the ‘Articles and Speeches, 1913-1965’ series contains papers Heyns wrote as a student at the University of Michigan and as an educator in Holland, Michigan. In several of these articles, Heyns reflects on the state of the world between World War I and World War II. The subject of war and its effect on the prison system appears in this collection from time to time. This series also contains speeches about recurrent themes in Heyns’s career such as prison education, prison employment and calls for a more passionate society.
The ‘Articles and Speeches on Corrections and Rehabilitation’ series contains speeches and articles that look forward to the future of corrections. The bulk of the materials in this series were written for an audience of penologists, but several speeches appear to be written for a more general audience with the objective of informing them about corrections and rehabilitation.
The ‘Administration and Organization’ series consists of mostly speeches and articles about prison administration. The series covers a broad range of topics related to prison administration but a considerable amount of materials are related to staff organization and the hiring and training of competent prison employees.
The materials in the ‘Articles and Speeches, 1937 – 1980’ were written during the span of Heyns’s penologist career. The materials in this series cover topics including juvenile delinquency, prison mental health programs, parole, probation, sex offenders, and capital punishment. This series also contains materials for penology and prison management courses at the University of Michigan and a course in Crime and Delinquency that was offered at Calvin College.
The ‘Associations and Congresses’ series contains correspondence, reports, and, programs from prison organizations and events. A manual for suggested standards for a state correctional system is also included in this series.
The ‘Michigan Department of Corrections’, ‘Michigan Reformatory’, and ‘Reports on the Michigan Department of Corrections’ series document Garrett Heyns’s time as the Warden of the warden of the Michigan Reformatory and the Michigan State Director of Corrections. This series is composed of reports, memos, financial reports, essays, surveys and studies. The bulk of the material in this series documents the operations of the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia and the Michigan Department of Corrections as a whole. It contains some materials related to programming at the Michigan Reformatory including a list of high school courses offered to inmmates and programs from plays put on in the institution. This series also contains a detailed history of corrections in the state of Michigan. The subjects of prison labor, prison education, inmate health, prison riots, and parole are heavily featured in this series.
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