Prison facts and figures

Brief history of the Prison System in the UK

16th and 17th century:

Sanctions for criminal behaviour tended to be public events which were designed to shame the person and deter others; these included the ducking stool, the pillory, whipping, branding and the stocks.   At the time the sentence for many other offences was death.

Prison tended to be a place where people were held before their trial or while awaiting punishment.   It was very rarely used as a punishment in its own right.   Men and women, boys and girls, debtors and murderers were all held together in local prisons.

18th century:

Gradual decline in use of the death penalty except for the most serious offences.

Increase in transportation to colonies – but in decline by the end of the 18 th century.

Increase in use of imprisonment as punishment.   Particularly by means of prison hulks – ships – prisoners kept in chains there during night; hard labour during day.

Beginnings of prison reform – people like Jeremy Bentham and John Howard – a devout Congregationalist - were key figures.

Jeremy Bentham, and other penal reformers of the time, believed that the prisoner should suffer a severe regime, but that it should not be detrimental to the prisoner's health.   Penal reformers also ensured the separation of men and women and that sanitation was improved.

In 1791 Bentham designed the “panopticon”.   This prison design allowed a centrally placed observer to survey all the inmates, as prison wings radiated out from this central position.   Bentham’s panopticon became the model for prison building for the next half century.

19th century

Ideas relating to penal reform were becoming increasingly popular thanks to the work of a few energetic reformers.   Many of these ideas were related to the rehabilitation of offenders.   Religious groups like the Quakers and the Evangelicals were highly influential in promoting ideas of reform through personal redemption.

Gradual move away from idea of rehabilitation during 19th century; but the Prison Act 1898 reasserted reformation as the main role of prison regimes.   This Act can be seen to set the penal-welfare context which underlies today’s prison policy.

20th century

Different kinds of prison regime introduced – including borstals (designed to correct criminal behaviour in young people) and open prisons.

The Criminal Justice Act 1948 abolished penal servitude, hard labour and flogging.   It also presented a comprehensive system for the punishment and treatment of offenders.   Prison was still at the centre of the system, but the institutions took many different forms including remand centres, detention centres and borstal institutions.

Numbers in prison

At end-October 2004:

- almost 75,000 – cf 42,000 in 1993.  

of which:   women – 4,300

              under 21s – 10,800

              boys and girls (under 18) – 2,500

The UK has a higher proportion of the population in prison than any country in western Europe.

(source :   Howard League)

Currently 137 prisons, including a prison ship, HMP Weare, moored off Portland, Dorset.   There are two new ones planned.

Work of Howard League:

- to improve the quality of work in prisons

- to campaign against overcrowding

- to remove children from prison and have them placed in secure accommodation instead

- to help the Prison Service respond to the problem of suicides – last year 94 prisoners committed suicide.

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