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Between 1842 and 1877, 90 prisons were built or extended, costing millions of pounds. Many new prisons were built in the mid-19th century that were secure and allowed for prisoners to have individual cells. In these prisons, two different regimes were used to try to reform prisoners. Both regimes were harsh.

The separate system

The 1839 Prison Act preferred the new prisons to adopt the separate system. In prisons using the separate system, prisoners were isolated from each other, kept alone and worked on punishment machines such as the crank in their cells.

Prison chaplains would try to encourage them to live a more Christian, crime-free life. The belief was that with a lot of time alone, prisoners would reflect on their crimes and be reformed.

When prisoners left their cells, they were made to wear a mask and were kept silent. At exercise time, each prisoner held on to a knot on a length of rope, with each knot about 4.5 metres away from the next prisoner, so they were too far apart to talk. Prisoners were in their cells for 23 hours a day.

The silent system

In silent system prisons, inmates were forced to do boring, repetitive tasks in complete silence. One example was passing a heavy cannon ball. They slept on hard beds, ate basic food like bread and drank water.

By the end of the 19th century, neither the separate system nor the silent system was working. The suicide rate was high and there was little evidence that criminals were actually being reformed. There was increasing evidence that the isolation caused more mental health problems and decreased the chances of criminals being able to return to life outside prison.

The 1865 Prisons Act stated that prisons should be “hard labour, hard fare and hard board”. This showed a return to a preference for strict punishment rather than attempts to reform prisoners through separation or silence.