The Garland Thesis and the Origins of Modern English Prison Discipline: 1835 to 1939

Abstract

Abstract: In this article David Garland's (1985) seminal work Punishment and Welfare is discussed in relation to English prisons between the above dates. I suggest a rebuttal of Garland's critique of Michel Foucault's (1979) earlier work on 19th century penal developments because this critique is a foundation stone of Garland's general thesis about the origins of modern penality. Secondly it is argued that Garland took insufficient account of the influence of positivist evolutionist theory on penal thought in the mid‐ Victorian era and that his assumptions about the classical foundations of the totality of Victorian penality are oversimplified. Lastly, I argue that, notwithstanding, Garland was wrong to emphasise eugenic and neo‐Darwinian theory as a dominant intellectual and operational foundation of penality between 1895 and 1914.In fact the empirical case of prisons shows that traditional moral reformatory methods and classicism were the major theoretical foundations of prisons and borstals between 1895 and 1914 although significant projects based on the new mental science and neo‐Darwinian positivism were cautiously and experimentally tried.