‘A Want of Order and Good Discipline’

In the nineteenth century, prison became the dominant form of punishment for criminals, as capital and corporal measures were phased out and crime began to be thought of as a national, rather than a local, problem that demanded a national solution. Richard Ireland’s detailed investigation into the operation of a local Welsh jail between 1840 and 1877 is a revealing account of the relationship between the jail, its staff and prisoners, and the community as well as a thorough exploration of the reasons for and resistances to the growth of the penal system.

Richard Ireland is a senior lecturer in law at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and coauthor, with Chris Harding, of Imprisonment in England and Wales: A Concise History and Punishment: Rhetoric, Rule and Practice.