‘Prisons and the Public’ by Margaret Bondfield, JP
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| Author | RICHARD SPARKS |
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12439 |
The Howard Journal Vol60 No S1. October 2021 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12439
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 38–46
‘Prisons and the Public’ by Margaret
Bondfield, JP
RICHARD SPARKS
Professor of Criminology, University of Edinburgh
Abstract: This short article revisits the address that Margaret Bondfield gave to the
Howard League for Penal Reform’s inaugural annual general meeting, a little over
100 years ago. It seeks both to illuminate the framing of her argument, and note some
features of the moment and situation to which it was addressed. I argue that while it is true
that Bondfield’s speech reveals certain tensions that have remained somewhat intractable
in the field of penal reform ever since, it also demonstrates a conviction and ambition that
contemporary actors might well wish to seek to recover.
Keywords: abolition; Howard League for Penal Reform; Margaret Bondfield;
penal reform; prisons
It must have been a quite heady atmosphere in the Caxton Hall on the
evening of 3 June 1921. The Howard League for Penal Reform had just
been formed from the merger between the Howard Association and the
Penal Reform League, and this was its first ever annual meeting. The Pe-
nal Reform League brought with it a feminist consciousness forged in part
by the politicisation of imprisonment during the ongoing struggles for
women’s suffrage (Logan 2016). Both the secretary of the new organisa-
tion, Margery Fry, and one of the evening’s speakers, Margaret Bondfield,
had developed their interest in imprisonment in part through the severe
treatment meted out to conscientious objectors during the still very recent
war (Bailey 1997). As Fry herself noted, those two movements had brought
many otherwise respectable people into shockingly direct contact with the
prison: ‘unaccustomed travellers into this valley of shadow’ (Fry, quoted
in Bailey 1997, p.296). It would seem to have been a moment when alert
people would be acutely aware of the connections between the uses of the
prison and the wider world of power, politics and ideas.
Margaret Bondfield was certainly such a person. Fromthe vantage point
of 2021, when too few of us have even heard of her (like me, until I started
working on this short article), her introduction as Margaret Bondfield, JP,
might conjure up an image of someone quite different. It is worth recalling,
then, that women had only been made eligible to become magistrates by
the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, and that Bondfield was one
38
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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