‘Its Object is Not to Degrade, But to Elevate’: Reflecting on Preventive Detention in the Early 20th Century
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| Author | RACHEL BENNETT |
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12438 |
The Howard Journal Vol60 No S1. October 2021 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12438
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 19–28
‘Its Object is Not to Degrade, But to
Elevate’: Reflecting on Preventive
Detention in the Early 20th Century
RACHEL BENNETT
History teacher and independent researcher
Abstract: In response to growing concerns about habitual criminality and its impact
upon the fabric of society, the Prevention of Crime Act 1908 stipulated that when the
courts passed a sentence of penal servitude upon repeat offenders, they could additionally
pass a sentence of preventive detention if it was deemed expedient for the protection of
the public. Reflecting upon the commentaries of those who worked within the preventive
detention institution at Camp Hill, this article explores the rationale underpinning the
regime and examines the management of the historic question facing the prison system,
namely how prisoners should be ‘doing time’ and how prisons should be using this ‘time’.
Keywords: Camp Hill; habitual crime; indeterminate sentences; preventive
detention
‘The prison method is callous, regular and monotonous’, wrote Arthur
Creech Jones, a British trade union official, politician and conscientious
objector who served time in Wandsworth Prison during the First World
War. He lamented that the deprivation of liberty was itself extremely cruel
but the fact that it was attended with ‘treatment that deadens the spirited
nature and fails to offer any stimulus to the imagination, that coarsens and
humiliates’ stood as an indictment on Britain’s prison system (Bailey 1997,
p.285). A study in 2011 (Liebling 2011) of the values that mattered the
most to people in prison identified the importance of respect and fair-
ness, the absence of which ‘is experienced as psychologically painful. Being
treated disrespectfully or without dignity generates negative emotions such
as anger’ (p.534). A long-standing criticism levelled at the prison system
time and again has been that it degrades instead of encouraging lasting re-
form and that there are too many people who enter into a revolving door
of reoffending and imprisonment.
Historically, habitual criminals have been labelled as a nuisance to so-
ciety, a costly threat to the fabric of the community but also as a sign of
a failing prison system. Victorian and Edwardian views about criminality
were firmly rooted in the belief that habitual criminals were a ‘distinct body
19
C
2021 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
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