ABSTRACT
Chapter 11 focuses solely on the appointment and workings of the Royal Commission on the Penal System, and its ultimate failure to present a report, a first for royal commissions. There were a number of reasons for failure, but foremost was the fact that a new Labour government wished to implement penal reform more quickly than the royal commission could handle, and there never developed a stable partnership between the two. If failure was inevitable, it was a severe blow to the rehabilitative ideal. The royal commission had a golden opportunity to provide a blueprint for the future. A new set of guiding penal principles could have been declared, a new penal structure envisaged, the abatement of imprisonment pushed farther, and the treatment and training ethos secured against the sceptical winds that began to blow after 1970.
