ABSTRACT
In particular William Douglas Morrison argued that many young offenders could be reformed in a new type of institution which would replace the prison which ‘with its blankness, its silence, its monotony, its almost complete exclusion of the external world and its realities reproduce[s] in a truly marvellous way the blankness, the deadness, the immobility, the lethargy of the prisoner’s own mind. Despite Gladstone, the abolition of hard labour machines and the introduction of other ameliorations of Du Cane’s system during the period of Ruggles-Brise’s chairmanship of the Prison Commission, no alteration of primary objective occurred to upset the low importance attached to reformation of adult prisoners. Indeed, the inherent tendency of the penal institution towards unending regulation and categorisation of prisoners whom it is certainly tempting to define in terms of weakness or badness, manipulation or untrustworthiness, may require of chaplains a high courage in the face of institutional ethos amongst staff and prisoners alike.
