9 Summary of Session 5

In this session, you have looked at the origins of prisoner literacy rates. Information about prisoners’ pre-existing educational attainments began to appear in prison registers in about the first decade of the 1800s. While some historians have argued that this information was collected in order to better understand the criminal, there was also a functional purpose: to facilitate instruction in reading and writing.

National collation of this data – annual prisoner literacy rates – was triggered by a need for evidence to support educational policymaking. Preconceptions about crime shaped both the measurement and interpretation of prisoner literacy data throughout the century. Prisoners were not necessarily more illiterate than the general population and the reasons for illiteracy within this community were complex. Systems of measurement were also used to assess the effectiveness of prison education. While many prisoners did learn something, gains were often modest and fragile. Rehabilitation proved to be very difficult – if not impossible – to measure.

You should now be able to:

• explain the reasons for the collection of data on prisoner literacy and the various uses to which it was put
• assess and use tables and graphs containing statistical evidence
• discuss the merits and drawbacks of systems of measurement for assessing prisoner literacy and rehabilitation.

Even if the improved literacy of departing prisoners was no proof of rehabilitation, measurement did provide evidence of useful activity within the prison. At the same time, prisoner literacy rates, especially when compared to the evidence of population literacy in the marriage registers, continued to highlight an educational deficiency among prisoners that needed to be addressed. So, in the 1860s, when a new generation of penal reformers who were sceptical about rehabilitation insisted on making the experience of imprisonment more punishing, the continued association of illiteracy with crime sustained the prison education project.

In the next session, you will look at the content and delivery of education in the context of a changing penal regime.

You can now go to Session 6 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .