ABSTRACT
By the early 1920s, a star class had been re-established at Parkhurst, while experimental ‘training’ regimes aimed mainly at star men were initiated at Wakefield and Wormwood Scrubs. In the 1930s, new minimum-security ‘open’ borstals and an adult ‘camp’ at Wakefield were also reserved for star-class inmates. Outdoor farm and forestry work was believed to be of therapeutic value to long-term prisoners; to compensate for its absence at Maidstone, small groups of prisoners were sent on ‘summer holidays’ to Camp Hill prison on the Isle of Wight. In 1932, a plan to close Maidstone and convert Camp Hill into a star-class prison fell through, but the latter then accommodated star men during the Second World War. After the war, the majority of star-class convicts went to Leyhill, a new open prison in Gloucestershire, where they were subject to a liberal regime. The trajectory of the star class after 1879 can thus be seen as a slow march towards ameliorated conditions and relative privilege. A minority were sent instead to Wakefield or Parkhurst, including many prisoners sentenced for homosexual offences. Preventing contamination had by this time faded as a rationale for prisoner classification, but it remained in this sense an imperative.
