ABSTRACT
Habitual offender, the With the decline in the use of transportation, public concern mounted in Victorian Britain over the number of criminals who appeared impervious to efforts to reform or deter them, returning repeatedly from prison sentences to continue plying their ‘trade’ as thieves. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, there can be traced a series of legislative experiments to control or incapacitate such ‘habitual’ offenders, all of which ended in failure. Minimum terms of incarceration on a second felony conviction (e.g. Penal Servitude Act (1864)), powers of surveillance and imprisonment of ex-convicts unable to prove honest means of support (Habitual Criminals Act (1869)), and lengthy terms of preventive detention (Prevention of Crime Act (1908), Criminal Justice Act (1948)) all foundered on common problems of definition, injustice and unpopularity with the courts.
