ABSTRACT
The Home Office continued to discuss the issue of separate confinement after the decision had been taken to reduce the length of separation for convicts. C.E. Troup, the permanent under-secretary, still tried to hold the line, believing the period of separate confinement to be an effective deterrent. Herbert Gladstone was unmoved. He marshalled three arguments against separate confinement: one, it was physically and morally damaging; two, it neither reformed nor deterred, not even the recidivist; and three, with the Prevention of Crime Act 1908, there was a power of longer-term detention to fall back upon. The issue caught fire again when Winston Churchill went to the Home Office. Gals-worthy wrote him in February 1910 asking him “to strike a crushing blow at a custom which continues to darken the humanity and good sense.” Churchill asked Ruggles-Brise for the arguments against the total and immediate abolition of the system.
