English Society and the Prison: Time, Culture and Politics in the Development of the Modern Prison, 1850-1920.

English Society and the Prison: Time, Culture and Politics in the Development of the Modem Prison, 1850-1920. By Alyson Brown (Suffolk: The Boy-dell Press, 2003. vii plus 205pp.).

Alyson Brown's English Society and the Prison: Time, Culture and Politics in the Development of the Modern Pri0son, 1850-1920 explores the causes and consequences of prison disturbances in order to gain insight into how the prison system was experienced and understood by different individuals involved with incarceration. Brown uses these outbreaks of disorder to illuminate the relationship between penal policies and the complex interactions and power struggles that regularly occurred within these institutions. Brown demonstrates that while large-scale riots were a rare occurrence, smaller infractions of prison rules or minor resistances were quite common, and reveal the significant gap between official policy and reality of prison life. English Society and the Prison is an important contribution to ongoing debates about the transformation of penal theory and its impact on the lives of prisoners during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Those studying the history of prisons and punishment in England have traditionally asserted that the second half of the nineteenth century was dominated by the "classical school" of penology, which treated crime as the result of moral failure, and emphasized the need for uniform, proportional and highly deterrent forms of punishment. David Garland and Martin Wiener both identified the period between the 1890s and the 1920s as one during which this classical Victorian criminal policy was undermined by the social sciences and neo-Darwinism, and replaced with a more "positivist criminology," that stressed environmental and factors beyond the control of the criminal in the decision to commit offences. "Positivist criminology" advocated treatment and therapy, as well as the need for greater individualization in the approach to offenders. (1) More recent work by Victor Bailey has demonstrated that this transformation was, in fact, much more limited and uneven, and continuous with earlier periods. (2) Brown's research largely supports Bailey's contention that the changes within the English prison system were more complex and variable than teleological models allow. Brown's nuanced work demonstrates that the reality of day-to-day life in English prisons was shaped by many layers of individuals and organizations, including the public, government officials, local authorities, prison staff and the prisoners themselves. Official policy, which was often shaped or hardened by outbreaks of disturbance, was not always reflected in the actions of prison staff. Prison administrators and officials were sometimes resistant to implementing new theories, and often made compromises and accommodations necessitated by realities on the ground.

In order to understand the causes of prison disorder, one must have insight into how long-term sentences and the policy of deterrence were experienced by those incarcerated. One important factor in the outbreak of disturbances was the distorted sense of time brought about by long exposure to the disciplined and structured regime of rules and schedules within the prison. Ordered uniformity, separation, and silence were central components of classical penology. The loss of autonomous individual time, the inability to communicate with other prisoners, and the monotony of routine, caused prisoners to develop a sense of an extended present that increased the burden of a long sentence. Frustration caused by this altered sense of time increased the likelihood of disturbances by prisoners who were prepared to accept punishment in order to assert autonomy and independence. One weakness in Brown's discussion of the prisoners' sense of time and space, which the author readily acknowledges, is the use of prisoner autobiographies as source material. Those who recounted their prison experience in memoirs were hardly typical of the Victorian prison population. Given the scarcity of sources available that permit the historian to hear the prisoners themselves, the use of these sources is justifiable.

Brown goes on to explore the causes and consequences of prison disturbances occurring in the 1850s and 1860s, as the system of transportation in England was ending and efforts were made to implement a more deterrent prison regime. In particular, Brown examines the 1861 riot at the Chatham Convict Prison to explore the issue of legitimacy within the prison. The riot at Chatham, as well as an increase in disturbances at other public works convict prisons, was contributed to by internal corruption and the perception by many prisoners that the staff was inconsistent in their application of rules and in upholding minimal standards of fairness. Although the Chatham riot hardened public and political opinion and added support to the creation of a more severe penal regime, it also highlighted the obstacles to its implementation. Despite greater official efforts toward deterrence and uniformity, in local prisons informal accommodations, trafficking, and inmate subcultures continued to be tolerated out of a desire to maintain order. Indeed, the imposition of a highly deterrent regime, and the lack of checks upon excesses by prison staff, could be an important cause of disorder in public works convict prisons during the second half of the nineteenth century. Brown finds that deterrent penal servitude and inadequate oversight of staff in convict prisons led many prisoners to violence and extreme acts of self injury.

Beginning with the Gladstone Committee in 1895, the deterrent model of penal policy was supposedly undermined over the next twenty-five years by more positivist ideas about crime and punishment. The increased number of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience who experienced incarceration over these years also added to this pressure for reform. Yet, in both local and convict prisons, officers often resisted many new policies which they lacked input in creating. Some of these officers were frustrated by changes and confusions about their evolving role and found themselves alienated from authorities upon whom they could no longer count upon for unqualified support, as exemplified by a 1907 incident in which officers at Wormwood Scrubs prison Assaulted inmates during a disturbance. Brown highlights the institutional resistance that could greatly slow the pace of reform.

English Society and the Prison demonstrates the frequent gap between official policy or law and its implementation at the local level, and in doing so it is a useful contribution to the literature. The chapters are often stronger as individual essays, and do not always fit together seamlessly to form a coherent whole. The essay on political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, in particular, is not strongly woven into the overall structure of the book. This caveat aside, historians and criminologists will find Brown's volume of much interest.

Christopher Frank

University of Manitoba 

ENDNOTES

1. David Garland, Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies (Aldershot, 1986). Martin J. Wiener, Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830-1914 (Cambridge, 1990).

2. Victor Bailey, "English Prisons, Penal Culture, and the Abatement of Imprisonment, 1895-1922," The Journal of British Studies 36:3 (Jul 1997): 285-324.