ABSTRACT
The Home Office officials found their hands stayed, not only when they strove to put down profit-making in prisons, but also when they sought to enforce the Act of 1865 by compelling the County Justices to incur the expense of building new gaols on the cellular plan. The assumption by the Home Office of increased powers of control. An Act of 1844 had empowered him to appoint a Surveyor-General of Prisons, who could exercise influence on plans for new buildings, but could not require new prisons to be built. A sudden increase in the number of robberies with violence in the streets of London led to a renewed outburst of the popular demand for greater severity in the treatment of convicted prisoners. The Directors of Convict Prisons avowed in their report that their object was to make the universal term of strict cellular isolation as deterrent as possible.
