Gustave de Beaumont

Born February 6, 1802 (Beaumont-la-Chartre, France)

Died February 22, 1866 (Paris, France)

French magistrate, prison reformer

Gustave de Beaumont was a nineteenth-century French statesman when he received a commission from the King of France Louis Phillipe (1773–1850) to inspect American prison systems for the French government. In 1831 Beaumont and his friend and noted historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) sailed to the United States. They spent nine months inspecting American prisons. At the completion of their study, they published a report entitled On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application to France.

America was the New World to Europeans in the 1830s. The French Revolution (1789–99; a war in which the monarchy was overthrown and a republic was established) had called for "liberty, equality and fraternity," and the United States was seen as the political future with its principles based in individualism and equality. Many Europeans came to North America to observe and write accounts during these years. But the experiences of Beaumont and Tocqueville—in observing the U.S. criminal justice system—would greatly affect the thinking of the Western world.