‘Fitted both Morally and Physically to Fulfil his Proper Duties in the Battle of Life’? – The Effectiveness or Otherwise of Penal Servitude and Imprisonment 1853–2021
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| Author | DAVID J. COX |
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12419 |
The Howard Journal Vol60 No S1. October 2021 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12419
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 47–55
‘Fitted both Morally and Physically to
Fulfil his Proper Duties in the Battle
of Life’? – The Effectiveness or
Otherwise of Penal Servitude and
Imprisonment 1853–2021
DAVID J. COX
Reader in Criminal Justice History, University of Wolverhampton
Abstract: This article is a response to two questions posed in an article published in the
first volume of the Howard Journal. That article asked, ‘should penal servitude be abol-
ished?’ and also discussed the merits of ‘preventive detention’, in which so-called ‘habitual’
criminals could be imprisoned for up to ten years after their original sentence had expired,
in order to keep the public safe for an extended time. The current article therefore looks at
the limitations and problems of penal servitude (which operated from 1853 until 1948)
together with a brief examination of the success or otherwise of preventive detention.
Keywords: convicts; imprisonment; penal servitude; preventive detention;
prisoners
In an anonymous article entitled ‘Should penal servitude be abolished?’
(Anon 1921), published in the first volume of the Howard Journal,theau-
thor in fact poses two separate questions: first, whether the system of long-
term imprisonment known as penal servitude was fit for purpose; and sec-
ond, whether or not determinate sentences should be replaced by indeter-
minate ones in the form of what was known as preventive detention. The
author was clearly extremely critical of penal servitude, claiming that ‘this
artificial system still deals with a higher percentage of recidivists than any
prison system in the world’ (p.40). He or she was clearly in favour of its abo-
lition, which had been recently and tentatively proposed by the then Home
Secretary,Edward Shortt MP KC, simply stating that: ‘From the standpoint
of scientific criminology, it is not only anomalous, but illogical’ (p.40). Ed-
ward Shortt’s proposal was never taken up by Lloyd George’s coalition
government which itself collapsed in the following year due to the with-
drawal of Conservative support.
47
C
2021 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League
and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
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