| Chapter 2: | What is a Prison |
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According to Oscar Wilde, Du Cane’s officials and scientists issued detailed instructions on how to cook meals in such a way that they had a smell, taste and consistency so repulsive that some prisoners began to feel nauseous or suffer from diarrhea (“Don’t Read This” 1046; McConville “Victorian” 149). It is also worth noting that the 1865 Prison Act made the ‘separate’ system, i.e., absolute solitary confinement, compulsory in local prisons. Hence, inmates were strictly separated and the solace of reading was restricted to the Bible or books of religious exhortation to cause the prisoners to repent and reflect upon ‘the errors of their ways.’
The disillusionment with Du Cane’s regime led to the Gladstone Report of 1895, which reinvented the idea of rehabilitation. Certain offenders like women, children, alcoholics, and first offenders were accorded different, more humane treatment. Du Cane was then replaced as Chairman of the Prison Commission by Sir Evelyn Ruggles Brise, who defined the purpose of imprisonment as being for “the humanisation of the individual” (qtd. in Bryan and Wilson 2). Prisoners were allowed to do ‘useful work’; the ‘separate’ system was abolished; and psychologists were introduced into prison. In 1910, Churchill provided a very clear condemnation of punitive imprisonment:
In 1922, the reform-minded Alexander Paterson, who made much of his aphorism that “men are sent to prison as a punishment, not for punishment,” was appointed to the Prison Commission. He was to remain a Commissioner until 1946 and his influence was immense. For example, in the 1930s, Paterson introduced the open prison system.