ABSTRACT
Nationalization brought two completely new problems to penal administration – the development of a reliable means of identifying prisoners, and the regularization of executions. Identification would involve a deal of fairly amiable scientific and bureaucratic wrangling and some controversial, even tragic, cases; executions were permeated with scandal and controversy, possessed of the aura and character of an earlier age of law enforcement. The law required that criminal identity should be proved by personal recognition and sworn testimony in court; documentary evidence on its own was insufficient. Local prisons had long been visited by police seeking suspects, or wishing to identify habitual offenders, but the Directorate of Convict Prisons had been given statutory responsibility for the formal identification and systematic recording of habitual offenders. Despite the rationalization of identification procedures by the issuance of standing orders and forms, the printing and circulation of the registers and the abolition of fee-taking, there remained a strong element of chance in identifications.
