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Exploring the history of prisoner education
Exploring the history of prisoner education

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7 Evidence of rehabilitation

Throughout the 1800s, summaries of prison school outcomes suggest that many prisoners – especially when imprisoned for long enough – did improve their skills in reading, writing and arithmetic. At least until 1860, many also expanded their religious knowledge and, to a lesser extent, their secular knowledge. Learning provided an opportunity, a set of tools, which prisoners could use to build better – and less criminal – lives outside of prison, but it was not in itself evidence of reform or rehabilitation.

In 1847, government commissioner Jelinger Symons declared that, although ‘esteemed by many educated people as at least highly satisfactory educational progress’, numerical statements of the number of prisoners who had learned to read, or of the number of Biblical verses that had been memorised, provided no evidence of reform (Symons, 1847, pp. 44–5). Some prison chaplains reported that although prisoners made good progress in acquiring or improving their literacy and numeracy, they showed no signs of moral improvement.

This black and white photograph depicts two men in an office. One of them sits behind a reception desk on the left, and the other stands beside a filing cabinet on the right. There is a wooden partition between them.
Figure 11 Recognising the difficulties faced by released prisoners in gaining employment and accommodation, from the early 1800s philanthropic societies were established to offer support. By the middle of the 1800s these had evolved into more formal Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Societies attached to local prisons, and eventually to districts. They were recognised by statute in 1862. The Glasgow Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, pictured here, was established in 1856.

There were good intentions. The Rev. J. Dobie, chaplain at Dartmoor Convict Prison, wrote in his annual report for 1855:

School training has, in numberless instances, given a new direction to their minds. Some of them promise me that they will attend evening schools after their discharge on licence, and thus complete what they began in prison, adding a promise that their children also shall be sent to school, even if they have to pinch to raise the money.

(Directors of Convict Prisons Report, 1856, p. 174)

In his journal, the schoolmaster at Yarmouth Borough Gaol expressed hopes for Robert Godfrey, aged 19, who had come to the end of his six-month prison sentence on 21 December 1854:

… he was very ignorant did not know his letters but by attention and perseverance he obtained a good knowledge in reading and writing and at one time signs of the grace of God were visible in his deportment. He made great promises of future amendment and said he had greatly profited by his imprisonment.

(‘Yarmouth Gaol Schoolmaster’s Journal’, 1853–1862)

The real test came after release when prisoners were once again confronted with the realities of life outside prison. The chances were better when there was support. Some chaplains gave Bibles to those who had learned to read and a few helped prisoners to secure employment. The schoolmaster at Norwich Borough Gaol invited prisoners to continue their instruction with him after liberation (Crone, 2022, ch.4). Some former prisoners wrote to chaplains, providing evidence of how prison education had made a positive difference to their lives. The Rev. Dobie claimed that because of the ‘sound, plain education’ that the convicts had received at Dartmoor, many had been able to obtain employment for which they would otherwise have been ineligible (Directors of Convict Prisons Report, 1856, p. 174).

These correspondents were self-selecting. Efforts by chaplains to trace former prisoners for quantitative studies of rehabilitation largely failed. Anecdotal evidence sat uneasily beside rates of re-offending and the educational assessments of re-offenders, who tended to be more literate and numerate than first-time offenders because of their previous experience of the prison school.