PRISON. Only in comparatively recent times has the word "prison" come to denote the common penalty for acts hurtful to the community both grave and petty which the law forbids. In the old Roman law, carter or prison was used only as the place for holding, not for punishing offenders.
The keep or dungeon of the lord's castle was usually the place of detention pending the payment of the fine or the execution of the sentence. Growth of population and the consequent increase in the number of offenders made it necessary to make special pro vision for their care; in '166, the Assize of Clarendon directed the building of gaols in all counties and boroughs. While these gaols were for the most part under local authority, the king's courts at Westminster had, from time immemorial, maintained their own prisons of the king's bench, Marshalsea and the Fleet, almost entirely for debtors and others confined as a result of civil process or for contempt of court. By the middle of the 16th century the common gaol was supplemented by the workhouse or house of cor rection, established by virtue of an act of 1576 under the direct administration of the local justices of the peace. Modelled on the famous "Bridewell" (q.v.) organized in London in 1552, these institutions were commonly called by that name. Instituted for the humanitarian purpose of providing compulsory employment with pay for "sturdy beggars" and vagrants and for men and women thrown out of employment by depressed trade conditions, these houses of correction came to be employed more and more for the incarceration of petty offenders. This change was officially confirmed in 1720 by an act of Parliament.
Prison systems, in the sense they are understood to-day, cannot be said to have come into existence in any country till towards the end of the 18th century, though isolated experiments had been made in different parts of Europe, e.g., in 1593 the protestants of Amsterdam built a prison for women, having for its object their moral reform by work and religious influences. There are records of similar establishments in Germany and Hanseatic towns. In
1703, Clement XI. built the famous prison St. Michel, at Rome, for young prisoners, and later on in the century the celebrated prison at Ghent was built.
In England it was not till 1729 that a report of a committee of the House of Commons brought to light the hideous cruelties practised in the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons. In the reign of Elizabeth (1561) these were the prisons of the Star Chamber and court of chancery respectively, and the office of warden was granted as a valuable bequest, or perquisite to be held through life. In course of time the reversion of this office was sold by auc tion to the highest bidder. Fees for safe custody were levied on the prisoners and were exacted by all forms of cruelty and oppres sion, until at last the scandal became so great that certain holders of this reversionary office were brought to trial for murder and cruel treatment.
As a result of the disclosures then made an act was passed (2 George II., 1729) but in spite of its enactment the system of payment by fees continued and no serious attempt was made to control the management, and it was not until fifty years later, that John Howard (q.v.), the sheriff of Bedfordshire, horrified by the conditions that he found to exist in his own county, entered upon his great crusade at home and abroad, to expose the terrible misery to which prisoners were made subject in England and foreign countries. The sudden stirring of the country's conscience by Howard's crusade was the dawn of prison reform, which at first with slow and halting steps developed into the great humanitarian movement of the present day.
In 1774 Howard received the thanks of the House of Commons and a Prison Act which was passed in 1778 is the beginning of the English prison system. The principle of separate confinement with labour and of moral and religious instruction was formally prescribed as a condition of imprisonment. It 1781 a further act was passed, making it compulsory for justices to provide sep arate accommodation for all persons convicted of felony.