The Chaplain'S Department

T Hroughout history the better part of what has been done for prisoners beyond the maintenance of a marginal existence and the provision of work originated in pastoral work. Education and welfare work in prison—even more than in the world at large—are a secularisation of tasks undertaken originally by the Church and her ministers. The prison chaplain's original importance was that he was the one neutral force in an otherwise impersonal and repressive régime.’ ¹ This statement is true both of the historical development of education and welfare in English prisons and of their present practice: all the matters dealt with in this chapter fall, in principle, within ‘the Chaplain's Department’, though developments in spheres other than that of religion tend increasingly and necessarily to their ‘secularisation’. As more importance is given to education and libraries, it becomes increasingly difficult in the larger or more specialised prisons for the Chaplain to manage them without detraction from his first duty—the spiritual welfare of the prisoners.