18th century During the eighteenth century, a wide variety of measures were used to punish crime, including fines, the pillory, and whipping. Until 1776, transportation to the American colonies was often offered as an alternative to the death penalty; which could be imposed for many offences including
pilfering. When prison spaces were exhausted in 1776, sailing vessels (
hulks) were used for temporary confinement. The most notable reformer was high sheriff of Bedfordshire
John Howard. Having visited several hundred prisons across England and Europe, Howard published
The State of the Prisons in 1777. He discovered prisoners who were confined, despite being acquitted, as they could not pay the jailer's fees. Howard proposed that each prisoner should be in a separate cell, with separate sections for female felons, male felons, young offenders, and debtors. The prison reform charity, the
Howard League for Penal Reform, is Howard's namesake. The
Penitentiary Act passed in 1779 following Howard's agitation. It introduced solitary confinement, religious instruction, a labour regime, and proposed two state penitentiaries: one for men and one for women. These were never built due to disagreements in the committee and pressures from wars with France, so jails remained a local responsibility. But other measures passed in the next few years providing magistrates with the powers to implement many of these reforms. In 1815 jail fees were abolished.
19th century (painting ) Quakers such as
Elizabeth Fry continued to publicise the dire state of prisons as did
Charles Dickens about the
Marshalsea in his novels
David Copperfield and
Little Dorrit.
Samuel Romilly managed to repeal the death penalty for theft in 1806, but repealing it for other similar offences brought in a political element that had previously been absent. The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, founded in 1816, supported both the
Panopticon for the design of prisons and the use of the
treadwheel as a means of hard labour. By 1824, 54 prisons had adopted this means of discipline. Robert Peel's
Gaols Act 1823 (
4 Geo. 4. c. 64) attempted to impose uniformity in the country but local prisons remained under the control of magistrates until the
Prison Act 1877. The American
separate system attracted the attention of some reformers and led to the creation of
Millbank Prison in 1816 and
Pentonville prison in 1842. By now the end of transportation to Australia and the use of hulks was in sight and
Joshua Jebb set an ambitious program of prison building with one large prison opening per year. The main principles were separation and hard labour for serious crimes, using tread-wheels and cranks. However, by the 1860s public opinion was calling for harsher measures in reaction to an increase in crime which was perceived to come from the 'flood of criminals' released under the penal servitude system. The reaction from the committee set up under the commissioner of prisons, Colonel
Edmund Frederick du Cane, was to increase minimum sentences for many offences with deterrent principles of 'hard labour, hard fare, and a hard bed'. In 1877 he encouraged
Disraeli's government to remove all prisons from local government and held a firm grip on the prison system till his forced retirement in 1895. He also established a tradition of secrecy which lasted till the 1970s so that even magistrates and investigators were unable to see the insides of prisons. By the 1890s the prison population was over 20,000. The British penal system underwent a transition from harsh punishment to reform, education, and training for post-prison livelihoods. The reforms were controversial and contested. From 1877, a series of major legislative reforms enabled significant improvement in the penal system. In 1877, the previously localised prisons were nationalised in the Home Office under a Prison Commission. The
Prison Act 1898 enabled the Home Secretary to enact multiple reforms on his own initiative, without going through the politicised process of Parliament.
20th Century The
Probation of Offenders Act 1907 introduced a new probation system that drastically cut down the prison population, while providing a mechanism for the transition back to normal life. The
Criminal Justice Administration Act 1914 required courts to allow a reasonable time before imprisonment was ordered for people who did not pay their fines. Previously tens of thousands of prisoners had been sentenced solely for that reason. The
Borstal system after 1908 was organised to reclaim young offenders, and the
Children Act 1908 (
8 Edw. 7. c. 67) prohibited imprisonment under age 14, and strictly limited that of ages 14 to 16. The principal reformer was Sir
Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, the chair of the Prison Commission.
Winston Churchill Major reforms were championed by
the Liberal Party government in 1906–1914. The key player was
Winston Churchill when he was the Liberal
Home Secretary, 1910–1911. He first achieved fame as a prisoner in the Boer war in 1899. He escaped after 28 days and the media, and his own book, made him a national hero overnight. He later wrote, "I certainly hated my captivity more than I have ever hated any other in my whole life. ... Looking back on those days I've always felt the keenest pity for prisoners and captives." As Home Secretary he was in charge of the nation's penal system. Biographer
Paul Addison says. "More than any other Home Secretary of the 20th century, Churchill was the prisoner's friend. He arrived at the Home Office with the firm conviction that the penal system was excessively harsh." He worked to reduce the number sent to prison in the first place, especially those imprisoned for their delay in paying fines, or for debts. He shortened their terms, and made life in prison more tolerable, and rehabilitation more likely. His reforms were not politically popular, but they had a major long-term impact on the British penal system.
Borstal system In 1894–1895,
Herbert Gladstone's Committee on Prisons showed that criminal propensity peaked from the mid-teens to the mid-twenties. He took the view that central government should break the cycle of offending and imprisonment by establishing a new type of reformatory, that was called
Borstal after the village in
Kent which housed the first one in 1902. The movement reached its peak after the first world war when
Alexander Paterson became commissioner, delegating authority and encouraging personal responsibility in the fashion of the
English public school: cellblocks were designated as 'houses' by name and had a
housemaster. Cross-country walks were encouraged, and no one ran away. Borstal populations remained at a low level until after the Second World War when Paterson died and the movement was unable to update itself. Some aspects of Borstal found their way into the main prison system, including
open prisons and housemasters (renamed
assistant governors), and many Borstal-trained prison officers used their experience in the wider service. In 1988, borstals were replaced with
young offender institutions for those aged 18-20, and secure children’s homes for those aged 10-17. Education, training and support are still the main focuses.
Later Reforms In general, the prison system in the twentieth century remained in Victorian buildings which steadily became more and more overcrowded with inevitable results. In 1979, the
government of Margaret Thatcher began implementing the "
short, sharp shock" programme. However, it was soon found to have had no effect on reoffending, with more than half of offenders being convicted again within a year, and was abandoned.
21st century Early in 2004, it was announced that the Prison Service would be integrated into a new
National Offender Management Service later in the year. In 2008, there were plans for rationalisation of the prison management system with the advent of the
Titan Prison concept, however these were abandoned in 2009. In 2016, six existing prisons were designated "reform prisons", with prison governors given autonomy in terms of operation and budget. Penal charities claimed reforms would fail if prisoners were "crammed into filthy institutions with no staff". The reforms have not expand beyond the first six prisons as planned, as the necessary legislation has stalled due to the
2017 UK general election. In 2017, the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) became Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), now known as His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service following Charles III's accession to the throne in September 2022. ==Current issues==