The Du Cane Regime Appearance and Reality

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 8 interrogates the achievement of uniformity in convict and local prisons under Sir Edmund Du Cane during the 1870s and 1880s. Du Cane’s relentless pursuit of uniformity across the convict and local prison sectors was accompanied by a tightening control over the dissemination of information about what went on inside of prisons, and a ruthless suppression of anything that did not fit. Using evidence from a range of official and semi-official sources, this chapter shows how officials—governors, chaplains and teachers—exploited loopholes in order to give more or less education, to more or fewer prisoners in need or desirous of learning. At the same time, Du Cane was forced to deal with the grievances of schoolmasters in both convict prisons and local prisons who protested about their pay and conditions. Criminal justice statistics which showed a reduction in the prison population in this period and which were used to highlight the success of Du Cane’s system belied the growth of short prison sentences. Prisoner literacy statistics suggested that the advent of compulsory education had done little to address illiteracy among offenders, and provided fodder for positivist criminologists searching for the natural roots of crime. However, the reasons for prisoner illiteracy were multifarious and the educational attainments of prisoners exposed the limitations of mainstream elementary schooling.