ABSTRACT
Historical research on nineteenth century prisons has focused mainly on the mechanisms of control that accompanied the rise of imprisonment as a modem form of punishment. It has analysed prison as an institutional system and has tended to examine the production of order through, for example, its regulation of labour, silence and activities, its educational programmes and its architecture. This approach has resulted in a historiography from which the experiences of prisoners themselves have been largely absent. The same is also true of historical studies of nineteenth century special prisons and re-educational institutions for young offenders. The absence of young inmates within their own history is striking. The ways in which juvenile delinquents experienced, and the extent to which they submitted to, or resisted, penitentiary discipline remains an open question.
