In 1905 the jail inhabitants of England and Wales was 21,525 and rising. Within the decade that adopted, that quantity almost halved to 11,311. The pattern continued, reaching a Twentieth-century low of 9,199 in 1918. This was no blip; these decrease ranges have been maintained all through the Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Thirties. By 1940 they stood at a mere 9,377.
The house secretary who laid the inspiration for this dramatic decline was Herbert Gladstone, son of William Gladstone, to whom he had acted as non-public secretary earlier than coming into parliament. In his father’s final authorities in 1892, he was appointed under-secretary of state on the Dwelling Workplace. The Liberal authorities, confronted with a hostile press marketing campaign – in opposition to the severity of the late-Nineteenth century jail regimes – and criticisms from Irish MPs who had skilled imprisonment, determined to arrange an inquiry which Herbert Gladstone chaired. The following 1895 report – referred to as the Gladstone Report – had a right away impact. Regardless of Gladstone and the Liberals leaving workplace two months after its publication, it was to end in reformation being added, alongside deterrence, to the goals of prisons.
Ten years later the Liberals have been again in energy. Between 1905 and 1915, firstly below Gladstone as house secretary (1905-10), and continued below his successors, Winston Churchill (1910-11) and Reginald McKenna (1911-15), the Liberal authorities pursued quite a few improvements in sentencing coverage. They consciously sought to scale back the variety of individuals imprisoned. These included the creation, in 1907, of a statutory probation service tasked to ‘advise, help and befriend’ as a substitute for jail; the introduction of Borstal as a selected sentence for younger women and men aged 16-21; the introduction of youngsters’s courts; and, most importantly, laws requiring magistrates to permit fines to be paid in instalments quite than instantly imprisoning these unable to pay. This measure alone dramatically diminished the variety of these serving very brief sentences, and the variety of individuals sentenced to jail fell from roughly 200,000 individuals in 1903 to 30,000 in 1918.
Much more exceptional than the decline was that imprisonment was maintained at roughly this degree for the subsequent 20 years. The Nineteen Twenties not solely noticed the 1926 Basic Strike and excessive ranges of unemployment, but additionally a speedy improve within the variety of vehicles on Britain’s roads, from below 200,000 to a couple of million, a determine that doubled within the Nineteen Thirties. Whereas within the 1900s recorded crime had grown on common by three per cent a 12 months, and the 1910s had seen a marginal decline, the interval after 1920 noticed important will increase. Between 1920 and 1930 recorded crime rose by 46 per cent and within the Nineteen Thirties it greater than doubled. The destitution of the melancholy, elevated geographic mobility, and the legal alternatives supplied by motor autos undoubtedly contributed to this improve. These elements would have been anticipated to drive a rise within the variety of individuals incarcerated – however they didn’t.
How can we clarify this relative penal restraint? Firstly, the First World Battle had an impression on social attitudes in direction of younger males, who usually make up the majority of the jail inhabitants. Not solely have been there fewer of them, however their behaviour was much more prone to be tolerated. Secondly, the general public interventions of imprisoned middle-class suffragettes and conscientious objectors meant that an influential part of public opinion was extremely vital of prisons. Prisons and Prisoners (1914), the damning autobiographical account of the suffragette Woman Constance Lytton’s 4 imprisonments in 1909 – together with her graphic account of being drive fed – couldn’t be dismissed in the best way working-class prisoners accounts routinely have been.
The publication in 1922 of English Prisons As we speak, edited and largely written by Stephen Hobhouse and Fenner Brockway, each of whom had been imprisoned as conscientious objectors, uncovered the continued poverty of the jail regime. Hobhouse and Brockway instantly quoted a choice of censored prisoners’ letters, handed to them by a Dartmoor prisoner. These letters spoke of jail as ‘the house … of damaged hearts, ruined lives and crushed manhood’, which ‘degrades, brutalises … and begets hatred’. One convict warned his household that on his return they need to ‘look out for one thing between a person and a beast, uncouth and uncivilised’, whereas others warned that ‘I shall deal with mankind now with out mercy’ and ‘I shall have neither compassion or pity on anybody’. The proof assembled in English Prisons As we speak was damning and over the subsequent 20 years it was to change into, based on Margery Fry, secretary of the Howard League, ‘the Bible of penal reform’.
All through the Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Thirties English jail administration was dominated by one of many contributors to English Prisons As we speak, Alexander Patterson. Appointed as a jail commissioner in 1922, he quickly asserted his private authority, insisting on personally interviewing all potential jail staff. Properly related and charming, his affect over politicians and newspaper editors meant that, regardless of rising crime ranges, and a significant ‘mutiny’ at Dartmoor jail in 1932, they largely prevented passing extra punitive legal guidelines or making populist requires harsher sentences. Austerity additionally performed a job. The choice within the Nineteen Twenties to take care of the gold commonplace put appreciable strains on public expenditure. In response, the federal government established the Geddes Committee on Nationwide Expenditure, whose suggestions led to substantial reductions in public spending. Not solely have been there no funds to broaden prisons, however sustaining the low degree of imprisonment allowed financial savings to be made as prisons closed.
Regardless of the relative restraint of its first 4 a long time, the remainder of the century was to see an rising variety of individuals incarcerated. By 1950 the jail inhabitants had elevated to twenty,474 and it continued to develop, accelerating dramatically after 1993. The rise, just like the earlier decline, was a results of political decisions: punitive rhetoric; longer sentences; an more and more risk-averse parole board; the routine recalling of launched prisoners; and delays within the courtroom system resulting in an elevated remand inhabitants. The present disaster dealing with British prisons is partially a legacy of those measures.
J.M. Moore is a Fellow of the Institute of Historic Analysis in London.
