| Abstract: | Over the course of the Empire demand for labour in the countrysideand penal reform together created the conditions for a greaterdeployment of prisoners, workhouse inmates and young offendersin agriculture. Farming on site, and especially leasing offenders,were the most cost-efficient ways of detaining men. Agriculturalwork was also regarded as key to their rehabilitation. It servedto equip inmates upon release for the sector of the economymost in need of workers. Outside work away fromthe institution was also seen as an intermediate stage in theprisoner's sentence before release. Two developments in thecharitable sector complemented this correctional strategy: theemergence of a network of workers farming colonies whichacted as half-way houses for ex-prisoners after release, andex-offender employment programmes run by prisoner welfare societies,channelling ex-offenders towards agricultural employment. Despitethese efforts to reintegrate offenders, re-offending rates remainedhigh. Penal authorities either attributed this to the incorrigibilityof some inmates, or pushed for longer sentences. In some casespenal and medical authorities were inclined to re-interpretthe criminal behaviour of repeat offenders as behaviour symptomaticof mental illness, and some inmates were transferred to asylums.In the discourse surrounding the failure of reform the argumentthat the exclusionary and punitive nature of the prison andworkhouse régime actually worked against rehabilitationheld little sway, nor the argument that high re-offending ratescould be attributed to the vagrancy and begging laws which criminalizedsystemic poverty and homelessness. Absent here was any understandingthat the life offered following release, working as ancillaryworkers or hands on the estates, bore too striking a resemblanceto work in agriculture during detention. This in itself wasone major reason why many ex-offenders directed into agriculturalemployment after release refused to stay and work. |
