The costs of imprisonment: A longitudinal study

The 1922 Prison System Enquiry Committee Report said that: 'In order to judge our Prison system rightly it is necessary to know what kind of people become prisoners... How many go to prison? For what length of sentence?' These questions persist, and are especially relevant for today's prison crisis. This project will assess nearly 100 years of historical data to explore, for the first time, how prison numbers were largely dictated by the repeat incarceration of recidivist's offenders with short sentences. It questions how the prison authorities attempted to manage increasing numbers of offenders by using early release schemes (licenses) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (licenses have only recently become available, generous access granted by The National Archives). This project will explore whether short sentences contributed to repeat offending, and whether early release schemes accelerated or inhibited recidivism. It investigates the financial costs of imprisonment to the country (and the human costs to those imprisoned) and does this over a significant period of time (allowing an examination of how repeated incarcerations affected the whole of an offender's criminal career). It concludes by asking what lessons can be learnt for today's debates about sentencing offenders and managing the prison population?