English Local Prisons, 1860-1900

English Local Prisons, 1860-1900 PDF Author: Sean McConville
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136104046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 838

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Book Description
The local prisons of the latter half of the nineteenth century refined systems of punishment so harsh that one judge considered the maximum penalty of two years local imprisonment to be the most severe punishment known to English law: "next only to death". This work examines how private perceptions and concerns became public policy. It also traces the move in English government from the rural and aristocratic to the urban and more democratic. It follows the rise of the powerful elite of the higher civil service, describes some of the forces that attempted to oppose it, and provides a window through which to view the process of state formation.

English Local Prisons, 1860-1900

English Local Prisons, 1860-1900 PDF Author: Sean McConville
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136104046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 838

Get Book

Book Description
The local prisons of the latter half of the nineteenth century refined systems of punishment so harsh that one judge considered the maximum penalty of two years local imprisonment to be the most severe punishment known to English law: "next only to death". This work examines how private perceptions and concerns became public policy. It also traces the move in English government from the rural and aristocratic to the urban and more democratic. It follows the rise of the powerful elite of the higher civil service, describes some of the forces that attempted to oppose it, and provides a window through which to view the process of state formation.

English Society and the Prison

English Society and the Prison PDF Author: Alyson Brown
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 9781843830177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This social history analyses a period in which the modern prison faced serious challenges both on practical & philosophical grounds. These included the use of prison to victimise the poor, the disaffected & political activists, & the failure to establish the prison as a satisfactory means of punishment.

Disorder Contained

Disorder Contained PDF Author: Catherine Cox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009002198
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Disorder Contained is the first historical account of the complex relationship between prison discipline and mental breakdown in England and Ireland. Between 1840 and 1900 the expansion of the modern prison system coincided with increased rates of mental disorder among prisoners, exacerbated by the introduction of regimes of isolation, deprivation and hard labour. Drawing on a range of archival and printed sources, the authors explore the links between different prison regimes and mental distress, examining the challenges faced by prison medical officers dealing with mental disorder within a system that stressed discipline and punishment and prisoners' own experiences of mental illness. The book investigates medical officers' approaches to the identification, definition, management and categorisation of mental disorder in prisons, and varied, often gendered, responses to mental breakdown among inmates. The authors also reflect on the persistence of systems of punishment that often aggravate rather than alleviate mental illness in the criminal justice system up to the current day. This title is also available as Open Access.

Nineteenth-Century Crime and Punishment

Nineteenth-Century Crime and Punishment PDF Author: Victor Bailey
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351001590
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1569

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Book Description
This four volume collection looks at the essential issues concerning crime and punishment in the long nineteenth-century. Through the presentation of primary source documents, it explores the development of a modern pattern of crime and a modern system of penal policy and practice, illustrating the shift from eighteenth century patterns of crime (including the clash between rural custom and law) and punishment (unsystematic, selective, public, and body-centred) to nineteenth century patterns of crime (urban, increasing, and a metaphor for social instability and moral decay, before a remarkable late-century crime decline) and punishment (reform-minded, soul-centred, penetrative, uniform and private in application). The first two volumes focus on crime itself and illustrate the role of the criminal courts, the rise and fall of crime, the causes of crime as understood by contemporary investigators, the police ways of ‘knowing the criminal,’ the role of ‘moral panics,’ and the definition of the ‘criminal classes’ and ‘habitual offenders’. The final two volumes explore means of punishment and look at the shift from public and bodily punishments to transportation, the rise of the penitentiary, the convict prison system, and the late-century decline in the prison population and loss of faith in the prison.

Prison Life in Victorian England

Prison Life in Victorian England PDF Author: Michelle Higgs
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750984740
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
It is a commonly held assumption that all Victorian prisons were grim, abhorrent places, loathed by their inmates. This is undoubtedly an accurate description of many English prisons in the nineteenth century However, because of the way in which prisons were run, there were two distinct types: convict prisons and local prisons. While convict prisons attempted to reform their inmates, local prisons acted as a deterrent. This meant that standards of accommodation and sanitation were lower than in convict prisons and treatment, particularly in terms of the hard labour prisoners were expected to undertake, was often more severe. Whichever type of prison they were sent to, for many prisoners and convicts from the poorest classes, prison life compared favourably with their own miserable existence at home.

A History of Women’s Prisons in England

A History of Women’s Prisons in England PDF Author: Susanna Menis
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527543706
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
This book presents a revisionist prison history which brings to the forefront the relationship between gender and policy. It examines women’s prisons in England from the late 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, drawing attention to the detrimental effect the orthodox closed prison has on penal reform. The text investigates the clash between what was conceptualised as desirable prison policy and the actual implementation and implications of such a penalty on the prisoner. It challenges previous claims made about the invisibility of women prisoners in historical penal policy, and provides an original analysis of the open prison, taking HMP Askham Grange as a case study, where the history of such an initiative is explored and debated.

Irish Political Prisoners 1960-2000

Irish Political Prisoners 1960-2000 PDF Author: Seán McConville
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136577157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1168

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Book Description
This is a comprehensive, detailed and humane account of the thousands who came into custody during the years of the Northern Ireland conflict and how they lived out the months, years and decades in Irish and English maximum security prisons. Erupting in 1969, the Northern Ireland troubles continued with terrible intensity until 1998. The most enduring civil conflict in Western Europe since the Second World War cost almost 4,000 lives, inflicted a vast toll of injuries and wrought much destruction. Based on extensive archival research and numerous interviews, this book covers the jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and England, providing an account of riots, escapes, strip and dirty protests and hunger strikes. It paints a picture of coming to terms with sentences, some of which lasted for two decades and more. Republicans and loyalists, male and female prisoners, officials and staff, families, supporters, clergy and politicians all played a part – and all were changed. The narrative includes some of the most remarkable events in prison history anywhere – mass breakouts, organised cell-fouling and prolonged nakedness, and hunger striking to the death; there are also accounts of the prisoners’ very effective parallel command structure. The book shows how Anglo-Irish and intra-Irish relations were profoundly affected and how the prisoners’ involvement and consent were critical to the Good Friday Agreement that ended the long war. The final part of a trilogy dealing with Irish political prisoners from 1848 to 2000 by renowned expert Seán McConville, this is an essential resource for students and scholars of Irish history and Irish political prisoners; it is also a major contribution to the study of imprisonment.

‘Star Men’ in English Convict Prisons, 1879-1948

‘Star Men’ in English Convict Prisons, 1879-1948 PDF Author: Ben Bethell
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000648230
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
This book tells the story of the star class, a segregated division for first offenders in English convict prisons; known informally as ‘star men’, convicts assigned to the division were identified by a red star sewn to their uniforms. ‘Star Men’ in English Convict Prisons, 1879–1948 investigates the origins of the star class in the years leading up to its establishment in 1879, and charts its subsequent development during the late-Victorian, Edwardian, and interwar decades. To what extent did the star class serve to shield ‘gentleman convicts’ from their social inferiors and allow them a measure of privilege? What was the precise nature of the ‘contamination’ by which they and other ‘accidental criminals’ were believed to be threatened? And why, for the first twenty years of its existence, were first offenders convicted of ‘unnatural crimes’ barred from the division? To explore these questions, the book considers the making and implementation of penal policy by senior civil servants and prison administrators, and the daily life and work of prisoners at policy’s receiving end. It re-examines evolving notions of criminality, the competing aims of reformation and deterrence, and the role and changing nature of prison labour. Along the way, readers will encounter an array of star men, including arsonists, abortionists, sex offenders and reprieved murderers, disgraced bankers, light-fingered postmen, bent solicitors, and perjuring policemen. Taking a fresh look at English prison history through converging lenses of class, sexuality, and labour, ‘Star Men’ in English Convict Prisons, 1879-1948 will be of great interest to penal historians and historical criminologists, and to scholars working on related aspects of modern British history.

Illiterate Inmates

Illiterate Inmates PDF Author: Rosalind Crone
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192570579
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
The nineteenth-century prison, we have been told, was a place of 'hard labour, hard board, and hard fare'. Yet it was also a place of education. Schemes to teach prisoners to read and write, and sometimes more besides, can be traced to the early 1800s. State-funded elementary education for prisoners pre-dated universal and compulsory education for children by fifty years. In the 1860s, when the famous maxim, just cited, became the basis of national penal policy, arithmetic was included by legislators alongside reading and writing as a core skill to be taught in English prisons. By c.1880 every prison in England used to accommodate those convicted of criminal offences had a formal education programme in which the 3Rs - reading, writing, and arithmetic - were taught, to males and females, adults and children alike. Not every programme, however, had prisoners enrolled in it. Illiterate Inmates tells the story of the emergence, at the turn of the nineteenth century, of a powerful idea - the provision of education in prisons for those accused and convicted of crime - and its execution over the century that followed. Using evidence from both local and convict prisons, the study shows how education became part of the modern penal regime. While the curriculum largely reflected that of mainstream elementary schools, the delivery of education, shaped by the penal environment, created an entirely different educational experience. At the same time, philosophies of imprisonment which prioritised punishment and deterrence over reformation undermined any socially reconstructive ambitions. Thus the period between 1800 and 1899 witnessed the rise and fall of the prison school in England.

Execution Culture in Nineteenth Century Britain

Execution Culture in Nineteenth Century Britain PDF Author: Patrick Low
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000095819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
This edited collection offers multi-disciplinary reflections and analysis on a variety of themes centred on nineteenth century executions in the UK, many specifically related to the fundamental change in capital punishment culture as the execution moved from the public arena to behind the prison wall. By examining a period of dramatic change in punishment practice, this collection of essays provides a fresh historical perspective on nineteenth century execution culture, with a focus on Scotland, Wales and the regions of England. From Public Spectacle to Hidden Ritual has two parts. Part 1 addresses the criminal body and the witnessing of executions in the nineteenth century, including studies of the execution crowd and executioners’ memoirs, as well as reflections on the experience of narratives around capital punishment in museums in the present day. Part 2 explores the treatment of the execution experience in the print media, from the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The collection draws together contributions from the fields of Heritage and Museum Studies, History, Law, Legal History and Literary Studies, to shed new light on execution culture in nineteenth century Britain. This volume will be of interest to students and academics in the fields of criminology, heritage and museum studies, history, law, legal history, medical humanities and socio-legal studies.