Who were the Meliorists and what impact do they have on contemporary uS culture (to say nothing of most of Western Europe)?

Melior is Latin for 'better' or 'improved' so presumably a Meliorist is a reformer, such as Jeremy Bentham; the capital letter being either the result of an old practice in printing, whereby all nouns were given a capital (!), or it's one of some school of philosophers or political thinkers who believed that nothing in life should be taken unquestioned; there should always be the question " Is there a better way?"

Fred, certainly in the ballpark. The issue is what did their school of thought produce in most Western cultures?

To keep this thread from going on longer than many of my marriages, let me spring the data.

The Meloirsts believed that crime was a function of disease, poverty, lack of jobs, poor education, etc. (What in US circles is called "root cause" theory." When these elements were addressed, they thought, crime would go away. Thus they, and their intellectual decendants are responsible for the abolition of capital punishment in most Western countries.