from [William Crawford and Whitworth Russell], Reports of the Inspectors Appointed under the Provisions of the Act 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 38, to Visit the Different Prisons of Great Britain (I. Home District). Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 22 March 1836. pp. 47–8, 50–3, 56–7, 67–9.

As government became more organized and systematic in the formation of the early nineteenth-century state, the British Parliament aimed to keep itself informed of the condition of the prisons by appointing inspectors and receiving their annual reports, naming particular areas for investigation from time to time. Although the Home Department Report of 1836 contains a great deal of information and purports to be a rational analysis of it, the document's conclusions and recommendations are in fact driven by the agenda of its authors, Crawford and Russell. Crawford was prepared for a career in commerce but converted to Evangelicalism, focusing his energies on prison reform and especially the issue of juvenile offenders. Together Crawford and Russell would be unrelenting advocates of the 'separate' system of grouping prisoners in appropriately designed prisons; confining prisoners in individual cells to eliminate mutual corruption and encourage reflection, repentance and reform; enforcing work and education; and facilitating transportation, or (forcible) 'emigration', of convicts to the colonies.