ABSTRACT
In the 1860s and 1870s, the idea that some prisoners were less criminal than others led to proposals to segregate different types of offender and/or to vary their treatment. The 1878–79 Kimberley Commission on penal servitude stopped short of such proposals, recommending instead the segregation of first offenders in English convict prisons. The resulting division became known as the ‘star class’ and is the subject of this book. Its period straddles what are often seen as two distinct penal eras: the former is associated with the deterrent penal practice, the latter with its reformatory counterpart. The book challenges this historiographical convention and follows Martin Wiener in locating the origins of changes to penal policy and practice after 1895 in the late 1870s. The book also suggests that a distinction between ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ prisoner classification is less than clear-cut. The book’s historiographical orientation can be described as ‘pragmatist’ in that it privileges operational factors, while emphasizing the contingent character of penal change.
