ABSTRACT
W Hile it is well to start this chapter by remembering, from Chapter 1, that the majority of those who come to prison are not criminals and the majority of criminals do not come to prison, it is also necessary to qualify this statement by adding that in recent years the first part of it has very nearly ceased to be true. Atp. 195 of The Modern English Prison it is stated, in respect of 1931, that ‘only about one-quarter of the persons received into prison are convicted of crime in the ordinary sense, i.e. of indictable offences’: in 1949 those persons numbered almost one-half.
