ABSTRACT
T Hese representatives of the original function of the prison are today an awkward anomaly. The law presumes them to be innocent, and the Prison Act 1877 required that‘a clear difference shall be made between the treatment of persons unconvicted of crime’ and the treatment of convicted prisoners, and that special rules should be made ‘regulating their confinement in such manner as to make it as little as possible oppressive, due regard only being had to their safecustody, to the necessity of preserving order and good government.… and to the physical and moral well-being of the prisoners themselves'. These provisions were repealed by the Act of 1948, but their moral force remains, and public opinion would be properly disturbed by any suggestion of undue harshness in the conditions in which untried prisoners are detained.
