Michael Davitt, “Criminal and Prison Reform,” The Nineteenth Century, 1894

Michael Davitt was an Irish nationalist and M.P. for a number of Irish constituencies. He was instrumental in the formation of The Land League, whose slogan was ‘the land for the people,’ through which Davitt attained the peak of his political influence between 1879 and 1882. He had been sentenced in July 1870 for his part in Fenian arms procurement and smuggling. He was convicted of treason felony, and sentenced to 15 years penal servitude. The Gladstone Committee was still sitting when Davitt’s article in The Nineteenth Century appeared. In it, he describes penal servitude as “this scientific system of refined torture”. To ‘begin at the beginning’ of the subject of criminal and prison reformation, the length of the sentences inflicted upon prisoners comes up for first consideration. There has been some improvement in recent years (except in political cases of treason-felony) in the matter of shortening terms of imprisonment.