Overview
John Howard FRS, for whom the Howard League for Penal Reform is named, was a key penal reformer of the 18th century. In 1785 he and Jeremiah Fitzpatrick observed the sexual degradation of women and girls in Wicklow Gaol.
In 1813 Elizabeth Fry was prompted by a French-American Quaker, Stephen Grellet, who advocated sex segregation of prisons in Russia on his visit to the then Russian Empire, now Russia and Ukaraine. She visited and was appalled at the conditions of women and girls at Newgate Prison. She was the first woman to give evidence to a House of Commons select committee about the sexual degradation of women and girls at the hands of both male prisoners and warders. [8] This led directly to the Gaols Act 1823, which was introduced and supported by the Home Secretary Robert Peel. [9] Her letters were collected together by her daughters into a journal of her life (the custom among Quakers) "The Life of Elizabeth Fry".
In particular Elizabeth Fry was involved in the amelioration of the conditions of women and girls deported to Australia "in little better than slave ships". It is worth noting that it was not until 1833 that slavery was abolished in the then British Empire, some 10 years after the Act and some 20 after her work started.
The Act introduced regular visits to prisoners by chaplains; provided for the payment of gaolers, who had previously been paid out of fees that the prisoners themselves were required to pay; stated that female and male prisoners should be kept separated [10] as well as requiring the installation of female wardens to guard female prisoners; and prohibited the use of irons and manacles. [11] Peel's Judgement of Death Act 1823 and four others passed at the same time lifted the death penalty from 130 crimes. [9]
The Act was largely ineffective, because there were no inspectors to make sure that it was being followed. The Prisons Act 1835 offered a remedy by providing for the appointment of five paid prison inspectors. [12] This helped to stop the exploitation of prisoners.
Newgate Prison was a prison at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey Street just inside the City of London, England, originally at the site of Newgate, a gate in the Roman London Wall. Built in the 12th century and demolished in 1904, the prison was extended and rebuilt many times, and remained in use for over 700 years, from 1188 to 1902.
Elizabeth Fry, sometimes referred to as Betsy Fry, was an English prison reformer, social reformer, philanthropist and Quaker. Fry was a major driving force behind new legislation to improve the treatment of prisoners, especially female inmates, and as such has been called the "Angel of Prisons". She was instrumental in the 1823 Gaols Act which mandated sex-segregation of prisons and female warders for female inmates to protect them from sexual exploitation. Fry kept extensive diaries, in which the need to protect female prisoners from rape and sexual exploitation is explicit.
John Howard FRS was a philanthropist and early English prison reformer.
Penal transportation was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home.
His Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS) is a part of HM Prison and Probation Service, which is the part of His Majesty's Government charged with managing most of the prisons within England and Wales.
Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of a penal system, or implement alternatives to incarceration. It also focuses on ensuring the reinstatement of those whose lives are impacted by crimes.
A reformatory or reformatory school is a youth detention center or an adult correctional facility popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Western countries. In the United Kingdom and United States, they came out of social concerns about cities, poverty, immigration, and gender following industrialization, as well as from a shift in penology to reforming instead of punishing the criminal. They were traditionally single-sex institutions that relied on education, vocational training, and removal from the city. Although their use declined throughout the 20th century, their impact can be seen in practices like the United States' continued implementation of parole and the indeterminate sentence.
Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour that prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included involuntary servitude, penal servitude, and imprisonment with hard labour. The term may refer to several related scenarios: labour as a form of punishment, the prison system used as a means to secure labour, and labour as providing occupation for convicts. These scenarios can be applied to those imprisoned for political, religious, war, or other reasons as well as to criminal convicts.
The Piracy Act 1717, sometimes called the Transportation Act 1717, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that established a regulated, bonded system to transport criminals to colonies in North America for indentured service, as a punishment for those convicted or attainted in Great Britain, excluding Scotland. The Act established a seven-year transportation sentence as a punishment for people convicted of lesser felonies, and a fourteen-year sentence for more serious crimes, in lieu of capital punishment. Completion of the sentence had the effect of a pardon; the punishment for returning before completion was death. It is commonly accepted that 30,000 convicts may have been transported to the British American colonies, with some estimates going as high as 50,000.
Capital punishment in Australia was a form of punishment in Australia that has been abolished in all jurisdictions. Queensland abolished the death penalty in 1922. Tasmania did the same in 1968. The Commonwealth abolished the death penalty in 1973, with application also in the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. Victoria did so in 1975, South Australia in 1976, and Western Australia in 1984. New South Wales abolished the death penalty for murder in 1955, and for all crimes in 1985. In 2010, the Commonwealth Parliament passed legislation prohibiting the re-establishment of capital punishment by any state or territory. Australian law prohibits the extradition or deportation of a prisoner to another jurisdiction if they could be sentenced to death for any crime.
A prison, also known as a jail, gaolpenitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are confined against their will and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state, generally as punishment for various crimes. Authorities most commonly use prisons within a criminal-justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until their trial; those who have pled or been found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment.
Convict women in Australia were British prisoners whom the government increasingly sent out during the era of transportation (1787–1868) in order to develop the penal outpost of New South Wales into a viable colony.
There are three types of prison in Turkey: closed, semi-open, and open. A further distinction is made between ordinary closed prisons and high-security prisons. Many prisons have separate blocks for women and some also for children (juveniles), but there are also some prisons which are exclusively for women or children. Prisoners in Turkey are divided, as in many other countries, into remand prisoners and convicted prisoners.
The Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868 received royal assent on 29 May 1868, putting an end to public executions for murder in the United Kingdom. The act required that all prisoners sentenced to death for murder be executed within the walls of the prison in which they were being held, and that their bodies be buried in the prison grounds. It was prompted at least in part by the efforts of reformers such as Sir Robert Peel and Charles Dickens, who called in the national press for an end to the "grotesque spectacle" of public executions. Abolition of public executions was one of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment 1864-1866. A similar measure, the Capital Punishment within Prisons Bill, had been introduced in 1867, but failed for lack of parliamentary time.
The prisons in Wales are run by His Majesty's Prison Service, which is in turn a part of HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) which is an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice responsible for the correctional services in England and Wales. The objectives of prison confinement in Wales is threefold: to "hold prisoners securely", to "reduce the risk of prisoners re-offending" and to "provide safe and well-ordered establishments in which we treat prisoners humanely, decently and lawfully".
Prisons in Ireland are one of the main forms of punishment, rehabilitation, or both for the commission of an indictable offense and other offenses.
Punishment in Australia arises when an individual has been accused or convicted of breaking the law through the Australian criminal justice system. Australia uses prisons, as well as community corrections. When awaiting trial, prisoners may be kept in specialised remand centres or within other prisons.
The County Gaol, situated in North Parade, Monmouth, Wales, was Monmouthshire's main prison when it was opened in 1790. It served as the county jail of Monmouthshire and criminals or those who fell foul of the authorities were hanged here until the 1850s and some 3,000 people viewed the last hanging. The jail covered an area of about an acre, with a chapel, infirmary, living quarters and a treadmill. It was closed in 1869. In 1884 most of the building was demolished, and today nothing remains but the gatehouse which is a Grade II listed building. Within the gatehouse, there exists "a representation in coloured glass of the complete original buildings". It is one of 24 buildings on the Monmouth Heritage Trail.
A penal treadmill was a treadwheel or treadmill with steps set into two cast iron wheels. These drove a shaft that could be used to mill corn, pump water, or connect to a large fan for resistance.
Mary A. Size, OBE was an Irish penal reformer and officer in the English prison system in the early to mid-twentieth century, considered one of "the great reformers" of the prison system for women in England at this time.
