Prisons in Great Britain

The State of Our Prisons reviews the changes in prisons policy and practice in England and Wales from the period following the May Committee to the present day, and presents the most authoritative and independent commentary on the work of the prison system to date. Based on previously unpublished original research spanning the years 1984 through 1991--all supported by the Economic and Social Research Council--Roy King and Kathleen McDermott chart the performance of five representative prisons for adult males drawing on the accounts and evaluations of those most intimately involved: prison staff, and prisoners and their families. The early reported finding of these studies, which have been described by ESRC's evaluators as "dramatic and unimpeachable", chart the extraordinary deterioration in prison regimes as the system devoted its increased resources to security and control. In this volume Professor King and Dr McDermott use "regime monitoring" data and the reports of the Chief Inspector of Prisons to bring their findings up to date, and present them in relation to each of the declared goals of the new Prison service Agency. They conclude that although many improvements have been made since the Woolf Report, performance still falls short of that achieved in the early 1970s in several vital respects. In some areas improvements are jeopized by the new concern with austere regimes and the authors argue that some of the most important "key performance indicators" are simply not adequate.

The administration of prison regimes in modern Britain has remained a subject of intense debate and controversy for a number of years; in this book, based upon pioneering empirical research, three leading authorities examine the character of social life within two maximum-security prisons. By systematic comparison of the two prisons the authors compare the institutional structures and strategies they deploy for control of inmates. The material is set within the framework of a broader, social theory context. Original, scholarly, and carefully argued, this study will be of central interest to all those with an interest in prisons and their control mechanisms.

Hirschel and Wakefield provide their readers with an informed and interesting view of two criminal justice systems. The discussion revolves around the history and development of the criminal justice systems of England and the United States. The authors draw comparisions between the two with a view toward policy implications for the administration of criminal justice. The discussion includes areas of law enforcement, judicial systems, correctional systems, and ends with an evaluation of the English criminal justice system and lessons for both the United States and England.

The word "prison" immediately evokes stark images: forbidding walls spiked with watchtowers; inmates confined to cramped cells for hours on end; the suspicious eyes of armed guards. They seem to be the inevitable and permanent marks of confinement, as though prisons were a timeless institution stretching from medieval stone dungeons to the current era of steel boxes. But centuries of development and debate lie behind the prison as we now know it--a rich history that reveals how our ideas of crime and practices of punishment have changed over time. In The Oxford History of the Prison, a team of distinguished scholars offers a vivid account of the rise and development of this critical institution. Penalties other than incarceration were once much more common, from such bizarre death sentences as the Roman practice of drowning convicts in sacks filled with animals to a frequent reliance on the scaffold and on to forms of public shaming (such as the classic stocks of colonial America). The first decades of the nineteenth century saw the rise of the full-blown prison system--and along with it, the idea of prison reform. Alexis de Tocqueville originally came to America to write a report on its widely acclaimed prison system. The authors trace the persistent tension between the desire to punish and the hope for rehabilitation, recounting the institution's evolution from the rowdy and squalid English jails of the 1700s, in which prisoners and visitors ate and drank together; to the sober and stark nineteenth-century penitentiaries, whose inmates were forbidden to speak or even to see one another; and finally to the "big houses" of the current American prison system, in which prisoners are as overwhelmed by intense boredom as by the threat of violence. The text also provides a gripping and personal look at the social world of prisoners and their keepers over the centuries. In addition, thematic chapters explore in-depth a variety of special institutions and other important aspects of prison history, including the jail, the reform school, the women's prison, political imprisonment, and prison and literature. Fascinating, provocative, and authoritative, The Oxford History of the Prison offers a deep, informed perspective on the rise and development of one of the central features of modern society--capturing the debates that rage from generation to generation on the proper response to crime.

This is a unique study of the role of books and libraries in British prisons during the period of penal reforms between 1700 and 1911. Fyfe discusses the role of groups and individuals who advanced the ideology of reform as well as those who were actively engaged in bringing reading material into the jails and prisons of Great Britain. She examines the extent that different penal institutions and systems--including not only local jails and national prisons but also convict settlements and the hulks--came to adopt the use of books and libraries and their rationales for doing so. One of the author's most valuable contributions to the field is her rich bibliography of primary sources.

At the end of the eighteenth century, Jeremy Bentham devised a scheme for a prison that he called the panopticon. For twenty years he tried to build it; in the end he failed, but the story of his attempt offers fascinating insights into both Bentham's complex character and the ideas of the period. Basing her analysis on hitherto unexamined manuscripts, Janet Semple chronicles Bentham's dealings with the politicians as he tried to put his plan into practice. She assesses the panopticon in the context of penal philosophy and eighteenth-century punishment and discusses it as an instrument of the modern technology of subjection as revealed and analyzed by Foucault.

The Dutch penal system has for many years been held up to the world for its humane and enlightened approach to the criminal offender. Providing an eye-opening examination of both the policy and practice of the Dutch prison system, Downs includes a fascinating comparison with prison systems in England and Wales.

During the Second World War just under two thousand British citizens were detained without charge, trial, or term set, under Regulation 18B of the wartime Defence Regulations. Most of these detentions took place in the summer of 1940, soon after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister--when belief in the existence of a dangerous Fifth Column was widespread. At first, Churchill was an enthusiast for vigorous use of the powers of executive detention. He later came to lament the use of a power which was, in his words, "in the highest degree odious." Although many detainees were soon released, a considerable number remained in custody for prolonged periods--some for the duration of the war. This book provides the first comprehensive study of this Regulation and its history. Based on extensive use of primary sources, it describes the complex history of wartime executive detention: the purposes which it served, the administrative procedures and safeguards employed, the conflicts which surrounded its use, and the effect of detention upon the lives of individuals concerned, few of whom constituted any threat to national security. This study is the first to penetrate the veil of secrecy, telling the story of the most serious invasion of civil liberty which has occurred in Britain this century.