ABSTRACT
By the mid-1830s the Whig reforms had significantly redefined the relationship between central and local government, and enforcement of more uniform standards of prison administration had become a political and practical possibility. In these favourable circumstances the recommendations of the 1835 Select Committee on Gaols speedily produced new legislation, namely 5 and 6 Will. IV, c.38, 'An Act for effecting great Uniformity of Practice in the Government of the Several Prisons in England and Wales; and for appointing Inspectors of Prisons in Great Britain'. The Whig government thus applied to prisons its two leading assumptions - 'the value of uniformity of administration throughout the country and the impossibility of attaining this uniformity without a large increase in the activity of the central government'. 1
