Educating Criminals in Nineteenth-Century England

Rates of illiteracy remain stubbornly high among men and women confined in British prisons today. A House of Commons Education and Skills Committee report on Prison Education published in 2005 stated that 50% of male and female prisoners had reading skills, 66% had numeracy skills and 82% had writing skills at or below that expected of an 11 year old, while 52% of male and 71% of female prisoner had no qualifications compared with 15% of the general population. On the basis of this evidence policymakers and penal officials remain convinced of the necessity of programmes within prisons which address the educational deficiencies of prisoners. Less clear, however, is the extent to which such evidence should inform the development of prison education programmes, and how these programmes should relate to the broad and often conflicting aims of imprisonment.

Moreover, these problems are by no means new. From the early decades of the nineteenth century, the moment at which the prison became the predominant form of punishment in England, concern was expressed about the educational deficiencies of prisoners, legislation was passed which contained provision for the instruction of prisoners in the literate skills (ie. reading and writing), and statistics were assembled to highlight the illiteracy of prisoners and support the development of educational programmes. The education of prisoners has therefore formed a core element in the evolution of our modern penal system. Yet, to date, there exists no study on the emergence of prisoner education in nineteenth-century England, a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding which this research project intends to fill.

Specifically, this project aims to uncover the scale, character and impact of prisoner education between 1823, the passing of the Gaol Act, in which the government first legislated for the instruction of prisoners, and 1895, when the Gladstone Committee was convened to inquire into the provision of education in British prisons. For much of the nineteenth century, the English penal system was both decentralised and incorporated a variety of penal institutions. Thus to ensure that the study is comprehensive, this project will explore educational programmes developed in local prisons, national penitentiaries, public works prisons, hulks and convict ships. To this end, it will combine a range of evidence from 'official' and 'ordinary' sources, much of which remains largely untouched in the archives. For instance, while the reports of prison inspectors, select committee findings and policy documents formulated by the Home Office will be used to compile a broad survey of prisoner education across the period, this will be supplemented by detailed case studies based on the journals and reports of prison governors, chaplains, matrons, schoolmasters, and surgeon-superintendents, all of whom were responsible for the education of prisoners under their supervision at different moments. The quantitative evidence contained in prison registers will be used to chart the acquisition of the skills and the use of those skills (both sanctioned and illegal) by inmates over the course of their imprisonment. Records created by the prisoners themselves, including journals, autobiographies and manuscript letters (i.e. 'ordinary' sources) will be employed in an effort to recover the prisoner's voice.

This evidence will be used to address four broad questions: what were the aims of prisoner education in the nineteenth century; what methods were employed to instruct prisoners in the literate skills; how did the practice of reading and writing within the penal environment educate prisoners in the appropriate use of the skills; and how far could prisoners use the skills of reading and writing to reclaim their agency within the coercive penal environment?

This project on the uses of literacy within the nineteenth-century prison has substantial scope for impact beyond the academic research community.

First, it will be of great significance to both policymakers and practitioners in prisoner education. Over the past decade, as the prison population in the UK has expanded and rates of recidivism have remained stubbornly high, the government has renewed and increased its commitment to prisoner education. The focus continues to be on utilitarian skills-based programmes which directly address the educational deficiencies of prisoners as highlighted by the statistics on prisoners' literacy and qualifications. Yet it is acknowledged that the nature of the relationship between crime and education remains uncertain and the evidence of the outcomes of these programmes, especially of their rehabilitative effect, is limited. Furthermore, a growing body of researchers and practitioners in prisoner education, including from prominent lobby groups such as the Prison Reform Trust, the Prisoners' Education Trust, and the National Literacy Trust, have been actively promoting the educational value of broader Arts programmes in prisons which, if they do not directly rehabilitate (at least on their own), achieve alternative beneficial and lasting results. But these Arts programmes sit outside of official government policy and remain susceptible to funding cuts because they do not directly address the characteristics of offenders, narrowly defined by the statistics. This project will present a fresh perspective in this debate by uncovering the role of education in the evolution of the modern penal regime and especially its relationship to the contradictory aims of imprisonment, namely punishment and reformation. In the process, the project will assist in the development of much-needed new research on the collection and interpretation of educational statistics derived from offenders, by charting the nineteenth-century origins of these statistics and their first uses.

Second, this project will encourage new dialogue between those researching reading practices in the past and the present. This, combined with the fact that since the turn of the nineteenth century, largely as a result of prisoner education, prisons have served as hot-houses where debates about reading and its effects have been loudest, means that this project will have much to contribute to current discussions in society about the purposes, benefits and drawbacks of reading, not just within the prison, but in society more generally. In particular, the project will link debates about reading in the past and present, while relating such debates to evidence of actual reading, filling a gap that exists in present discourse about reading.