A reformatory is a juvenile prison where legal minors are sent by (juvenile or general) courts to spend a custodial sentence, separate from the bad example of and abuse by adult (often hardened) convicts, usually gender-separated (mainly boys). It is generally designed not just as a punishment but as a means for (re)education, to reform (hence the name) their hopefully still mendable character, trough a combination of strict discipline (symbolic for its harsh reputation is the term reformatory cane) and schooling (hence many are officially called Reformatory school or simply school) and/or labor. A custodial sentence is a judicial sentence, imposing a punishment (and hence the resulting punishment itself) consisting of mandatory custody of the convict, either in prison (incarceration) or in some other closed therapeutic and/or (re)educational institution, such as a reformatory, (maximum security) psychiatry or drug detoxication (especially cold... A cane is a long, straight wooden stick, generally of bamboo, Malacca (rattan), or some similar plant, mainly used as a support, such as a walking stick or as an instrument of punishment. ...

The reality has all too often tended rather to penal harm and/or exploitation. Alternative forms of juvenile reeducation have therefore been devised, such as community services, in some cases with beter results. Penal harm, an intentionally harsher form of the depravation of liberty, is the belief that during custodial sentences (mainly in prison or reformatory), inmates should endure additional pain and suffering, not just having their basic rights taken away, to make the punishment deliberately harder. ...

A well-known example is the British borstal. In the United Kingdom, a Borstal was a juvenile detention centre, prison or reformatory, an institution of the criminal justice system, intended to reform delinquent youths aged between about 16 and 21. ...

REFORMATORY is also an adjective, from and referring to any connection with reform or reformation, especially (notably when capitalized) to the protestant Reformation(s) of the (Roman Catholic) Christian faith.