Dickens on Prison Reform: Then and Now
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Prisons are a reoccurring motif in many of Charles Dickens’ novels. In Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and Tale of Two Cities, many main or supporting characters either spend time in jail or associate closely with criminals. Although this motif of prison is concurrent through his novels, it is not always possible to gauge Dickens’ opinions on prison reform. I began to scour his other works, including his journals for more information. Once I began to look through Household Words, one of the journals Dickens edited in the nineteenth century along with William Willis, I could more easily understand his viewpoints on prison reform. Looking through these articles, I found that Dickens and Willis had strong feelings about how the prison system was currently operating and how it should change. Most importantly, they believed the root issue to be the management of the prisons.
In “The Great Penal Experiments”, Willis clearly shows readers how terribly the prisoners were treated at Giltspur Street Compter. Located just two miles away from Pentonville Prison in Smithfield, the cells were half the size of a typical Pentonville cell, which was already only large enough for one inmate, but they would house up to five criminals per cell (Willis 251). The cells there were also not very well ventilated or ventilated at all, according to Willis. “I have seen five persons locked up, at four o'clock in the day, to be there confined…crushed by the narrowness of their den into a state of filthy contact which brute beasts would have resisted to the last gasp of life!” (Willis 250). Willis’ changes for architectural reform were simple, yet would greatly benefit the inmates and could potentially bring down the increasing prison population.
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Typically, prisoners were not given much freedom, being locked in their cell for 12 of the 24 hours during the day. Willis draws attention to the problem created of recitivism after being locked up in such terrible conditions inmates would almost always continue to lead a life of crime after their release (Willis 251). “Can we wonder if these men come out of prison, after three or four months of such treatment, prepared to commit the most revolting crimes?” (Willis 252). Willis wanted to avoid this problem by increasing the number of prisons to allow prisoners more space in their cells. This would decrease the possibility of recitivism and would drastically help the overpopulation problem.
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Hazell, Kyrsty. Man behind bars. Digital image. Man Serving 30 Years Wants to Father a Baby from Prison. Think Baby, 4 Mar. 2010. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
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While Willis focused more on the aspect of architecture of prisons and how that affected prisoners, Dickens wrote about the Pentonville Prison management and how poorly they were running the prison given the large investment to make the prison. “Upon the work done by five hundred prisoners in the Model Prison…there was no profit, but an actual loss of upwards of eight hundred pounds…in explanation of this astonishing fact…we put it to our readers whether the whole system is right or wrong” (Dickens 98). Charles Dickens also compared the amount of food received at Pentonville versus a typically workhouse worker at a nearby plant, and the results were quite surprising. Most of the food a prisoner would eat was much more than a workhouse employee. “This…is all the man in the workhouse has…against the immensely superior advantages of the prisoners in all the other respects we have stated” (Dickens 97). Whoever was running the prison was not equipped for the position and Dickens wanted to see someone who could more efficiently run the prison in charge.
It was very interesting to see how strongly that Charles Dickens along with William Willis advocated for change within the prison system. Dickens showed great empathy to his fellow Londoners and wanted to see more prisons like Pentonville in the aspect of size, where the prisoners were at least treated humanely (although Dickens did not approve of the management). Willis was also a staunch advocator of prison reform, especially increasing the size of prison cells. Their support for social justice in prisons from the management was quite welcoming compared to many people during this time who did not care to even think about the “lower” members of society.
In the almost 175 years since Volume I of Household Words was published, there have been many changes in the prison system. For example, the Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private corrections company in the United States, had $1.9 billion in revenue in 2009, which is much better than the loss of profit Pentonville was seeing during the beginning of its operation (Price v2 30). Although most of the original issues Dickens addressed have been solved, there are more management issues currently that I believe Dickens would advocate for if he were alive today. Some of the issues are the need for privatization of penal institutions, the change in the system regarding imprisonment helping convert the prisoners, and the challenge of not enough prisons for the people committing crimes. Dickens and his staff at Household Words anticipated many of these issues, although slightly differently, that we still face in our own time.
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The privatization of prisons is a hotly debated topic currently, and I have no doubt that Charles Dickens would’ve weighed in on the topic if he were alive today. I think that Dickens would be more than happy with privatization of prisons, as long as the private companies were able to manage the prison humanely and efficiently. As he stated in “Pet Prisoners,” “Upon the work done by five hundred prisoners in the Model Prison, in the year 1848, there was no profit, but an actual loss of upwards of eight hundred pounds” (Dickens 98). If they have good management in place, where the prison would run effectively and would be able to not hemorrhage money from it, Dickens would be fine with that. Dickens would advocate for a balance between financial efficiency and humane penal practices, which is adhered to by many of the larger private prison companies.
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Corrections Corporation of America. Digital image. The Private Prison. Correctons Project, n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
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Today, the percent of people in prison who have committed previous crimes is extremely high, which is an issue that is not properly dealt with. Dickens believed in the care for prisoners, especially those with mental health (Dickens 98). Currently, prisoners with mental disorders represent a large portion of the repeat offenders in our prisons (Dubber 200). Thus, many prisoners view living in prison as just the way their life is, rather than think they can be reformed and live as a member of society. Another problem with repeat offenders is prisons are not trying to teach them what they commit another crime, but they are rather creating worse sentences for each offense (Dubber 195). In the case of Rummel v. Estelle in 1980, Rummel faced life in prison after three felonies in which he utilized fraud to gain himself only $229.51 (Dubber 195). If Rummel was educated on his wrongdoing, he would be much less likely to commit this crime again and probably wouldn’t have faced life in prison.
Mental health and prisons have been an issue for many years, and not just the repeat offenders who are mentally ill. I think that Dickens would be exasperated with how the mentally ill are being treated currently. With the overcrowding, the mentally ill are being forgotten once again. In Dickens time, the mentally ill were not even recognized or taken care of. Especially with how many of them probably committed their crime due to their illness, I think that Dickens presents a great point with taking care of the mentally ill in prison.
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Another issue that was on Dickens mind, the overpopulation of prisons in each cell, is something that he believe to be associated with how the prison was structured. From a testimonial of someone who was in federal prison at the time, she stated it felt like “sleeping arrangements resemble either sardines in a can or a real-life slave ship (Bosworth 11). This eerily resembles Willis’ quote of “I have seen five persons locked up, at four o'clock in the day, to be there confined, in darkness, in idleness…crushed by the narrowness of their den into a state of filthy contact which brute beasts would have resisted to the last gasp of life!” (Willis 250). The spike of prisoners we saw in the United States in the 80s and 90s of two million to 7.3 million is quite comparable to the spike England experienced during Dickens time due to their rampant population increase (Price v3 150).
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Johansson, Ana. Prisoners in Lancaster, CA. Digital image. California, in Financial Crisis, Opens Prison Doors. New York Times, 23 Mar. 2010. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
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Overall, the American prison system has seen some great strides in how prisoners have been treated since the 1850s, but there are still many more improvements that can be made. Prisoners are still faced with the issue of overcrowding, and we have still not figured out a way to solve the problem of repeat offenders. They need to educate them on their wrongdoing, or work more with them on integrating them back into society and reducing culture shock. With the sanity of prisoners and their living standards at stake, mentally ill prisoners need a greater amount of attention, and that can be solved with the increase of prisons and the decrease of individual prison population. If Dickens were alive today, I think that he would approve of such changes in today’s penal system from his lifetime, as he and his staff actively agitated for reform during his lifetime. Dickens and his viewpoints on social issues still are poignant to this day and can easily be transitioned into the current issues faced each and every day.
Works Cited
Bosworth, Mary. The U.S. Federal Prison System. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002. Print.
Dickens, Charles. "Pet Prisoners." Household Words 1st ser. 1.5 (1850): 97-103. Dickens Journals Online. Web. 3 Oct. 2013.
Dubber, Markus "The Unprincipled Punishment of Repeat Offenders: A Critique of California's Habitual Criminal Statute." Stanford Law Review (1990): 193-240. JSTOR. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.
"Corrections Corporation of America." Key Statistics. Yahoo! Finance, n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2013.
Haney, Craig. Overcrowding in American Prisons Is Inhumane. N.p.: Greenhaven, 2010. Print.
Morley, Henry. "My Wonderful Adventures in Skitzland." Household Words 3rd ser. 1.10 (1850): 225-229. Dickens Journals Online. Web. 3 Oct. 2013.
Price, Byron Eugene., and John C. Morris. Prison Privatization: The Many Facets of a Controversial Industry. Vol. 2. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012. Print.
Price, Byron Eugene., and John C. Morris. Prison Privatization: The Many Facets of a Controversial Industry. Vol. 3. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012. Print.
Willis, William Henry. "The Great Penal Experiments." Household Words 5th ser. 1.11 (1850): 250-253. Dickens Journals Online. Web. 3 Oct. 2013.
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