ABSTRACT
The deterioration in the economic position of the English working classes as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the war, on the one hand, the gradual improvement of the lot of the transported convict, on the other, were made responsible for having upset the existing balance. A year after the establishment of centralized Prison Administration in 1877, the official attitude became again somewhat stiffer, in so far as a committee reported in 1878 that the object of prison administration was "to meet the just requirements of the prisoners without setting up attractions which would be likely to increase the number of committals". The new German system introduced by the Prevention of Crime Act of 1933, does not yet seem to have arrived at a satisfactory solution as to how to distinguish between the treatment of Preventive Detention prisoners and others.
