ABSTRACT
The attempt to institute uniform dietaries throughout all the prisons was a distinguishing feature of the era of control—an attempt taking the form of superseding by positive injunction the prohibition of luxuries. The subject of prison labour has demanded some attention as presenting difficulties in the administration of cellular confinement, and as a question to be solved before any satisfactory scheme of diet could be adopted. An alternative to complete cellular isolation had been found at the prison at Auburn, in New York State, in the prisoners working by day in association, but in absolute silence. The Home Office appears, from the outset, to have committed itself in favour of the system of cellular isolation. The Government seems almost to have charged the inspectors to collect evidence favouring the new panacea, and to have judged all prisons according to the degree in which it was adopted.
