Moral Guardians? Prison Officers, Prison Practice and Ambiguity in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The theoretical work on the birth of the prison in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries focuses on the transformation of punishment, the movement away from torturous, public punishments, to the increasing use of imprisonment to deal with the majority of offences by the mid to late nineteenth century. Frequently, this work is concerned with the regimes, policies and practices of the prison environment, and the experiences of those confined. Whig or orthodox accounts see this change as the progressive movement away from past barbarous practices. Whereas, revisionist accounts argue that the institutions that emerged were part of a wider strategy of social control, through which discipline was dispersed throughout society, and have questioned the motives of reformers and the resulting practices (Foucault, 1977; Ignatieff, 1978; Melossi and Pavarini, 1981; Rothman, 1971; see Introduction).

This research was supported by British Academy Small Research Grant Award No: SG 40723. The author would also like to thank the archivists at their respective record offices and museums for their assistance with this research.