JUDICIAL AND PRISON CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN NORTHERN IRELAND Retention of whipping as a judicial penalty and for prison offences Incidence of corporal punishment since 1922 Lessons to be learned from the abolition of corporal punishment in England Retention of whipping as a judicial penalty and for prison offences There appears to be no immediate likelihood of Northern Ireland following the example set by the rest of the United Kingdom which, under the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, s.2, abolished whipping as a form of judicial sentence . A limited measure of reform was instituted in Northern Ireland under the Children and Young Persons Act (N.I.), 1950, s.54(6), which prohibits resort to whipping as a discretionary penalty for any person under seventeen years of age, but although Stormont [Northern Ireland local parliament -- C.F.], when enacting the Criminal Justice Act (N.I.), 1953, chose to follow the lead set a few years earlier by the Westminster Parliament by introducing new forms of prison treatment such as corrective training and preventive detention, it failed to make any provision for the complete abolition of whipping.

Power to order corporal punishment for prison offences follows much the same lines as in England and Scotland, being subject to the approval of the Ministry of Home Affairs,[1] and the offences punishable by whipping are those covered in the English Act of 1948, viz., mutiny, incitement to mutiny and gross personal violence to a prison officer.[2] [1] See the Prison Rules (N.I.), 1954, r.33 (S.R. & O. (N.I.), 1954, No.7). [2] Prison Act (N.I.), 1953, s.14. It is revealing, however, to note a striking difference in the maximum punishment awardable in the respective countries for such prison offences.

Thus, whereas in England under the Prison Act, 1952, s.18 which replaces the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, s.54, the maximum number of strokes which may be imposed is: (1) if the person is twenty-one years or over - eighteen strokes of the cat-o�-nine-tails or birch rod; (2) if the person is under twenty-one years - twelve strokes of a birch rod; in Northern Ireland, under the Prison Act (N.I.), 1953, s.14, the maximum punishment is: (1) if the prisoner is eighteen years or over - thirty-six strokes of the "cat", birch rod or cane, (2) if the prisoner is under eighteen years - eighteen strokes of a birch rod or cane, (3) if the prisoner is a Borstal trainee - twelve strokes of a cane. Northern Ireland, it may be noticed, has elected to retain power to inflict corporal punishment for disciplinary offences in its one male Borstal institution , whereas no such power has ever existed in Scotland, and England dispensed with it under the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, s.54.

There is no need to stress the severity of the potential amount of whipping which a prisoner in Northern Ireland may incur, but this is all the more difficult to explain in view of the remarkable fact that Belfast Prison, which is the only prison in the Province for every class of male prisoner, has not known a single case during the years 1922 to 1955 involving the exercise of corporal punishment for one of the recognised prison offences. There was one instance in 1924 of threatened gross violence to a prison officer by a convict serving three years� penal servitude, but the sentence of ten strokes of the birch, awarded by the Visiting Justices, was suspended on condition of good behaviour. Despite the traditional belief in the natural fiery temperament of the Irishman, the experience of H.M. Prison, Belfast, has been singularly free of the type of assaults which are given so much notoriety in the English newspapers, and reliance has been placed, with seemingly satisfactory results, on close confinement, loss of privileges and dietary punishment as the means of dealing with any prisoner bent on violently assaulting a prison officer.

To revert to whipping as a judicial penalty, the present position in Northern Ireland is that it is retained for all those crimes which in England, prior to the passing of the 1948 Act, carried a possible sentence of corporal punishment. It is not proposed to enumerate the motley collection of offences which fell into this category, but when considering later the incidence of whipping in Northern Ireland it is worth recalling the opinion of the English King�s Bench judges in 1938 as expressed to the Departmental Committee on Corporal Punishment. In that (the Cadogan) Committee�s Report (Cmd. 5684 of 1938, para.

60) the judges are quoted as advocating the retention of the then existing powers for the crimes of garrotting (Garrotters Act, 1863, s.1), armed robbery, robbery with violence and robbery in company with another (Larceny Act, 1916, s.23(1)), procuring, and unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl under thirteen years by a boy under sixteen (Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, ss.2, 4), and living on immoral earnings and importuning by male persons (Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1912, s.7(5)). Furthermore, the judges recommended that whipping as a penalty should be extended to male persons of any age convicted of rape or carnal knowledge of a girl under thirteen years. Consideration to the same problem of extending the ambit of whipping in respect of sexual offences was given by a Northern Ireland Departmental Committee in 1943. This arose out of a particularly bad case of rape upon a thirteen-year-old girl by a gang of six youths which was tried before Lord Chief Justice Andrews at the Belfast City Commission in January, 1943.

Following the realisation in that case of the absence of any legal power to impose a sentence of whipping for sexual offences by boys under sixteen years, the Murphy Committee of 1943, by a majority, recommended that the power of whipping conferred by the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, s.4 (supra), should be extended to similar offences against girls under sixteen years and to cases of rape by boys under sixteen. Suffice it to add that the Committee�s recommendation has never been translated into law in Northern Ireland. Other additions, however, exist to the pre-1948 list of "whipping" crimes in England. As already mentioned in an earlier article ([1956] Crim. L.R.

15) corporal punishment is authorised under the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (N.I.), 1922, s.5, for arson; any offences punishable on indictment under the Malicious Damage Act, 1861; demanding with menaces with intent to steal (Larceny Act, 1916, s.30); any offence against the Firearms Act, 1920, in relation to the possession of firearms; and any offence against the Special Powers Regulations in relation to the possession of firearms, military arms, ammunition or explosive substances. Incidence of corporal punishment since 1922 Justification for the continued retention of corporal punishment in Northern Ireland is not solely a question of statistics. Certainly Parliament at Stormont is likely to be actuated far more by the belief that whipping as a form of punishment is analogous to the death penalty in its efficacy as a deterrent to members of the I.R.A. and other illegal organisations.

The scope of its operation is extremely wide and the unwillingness of Parliament to introduce even the limited reform of reducing the list of offences for which corporal punishment exists as a judicial penalty might be construed as indicating either unawareness or disbelief in the conclusions of the Cadogan Committee in 1938. Before proceeding, therefore, to analyse the incidence of corporal punishment in Northern Ireland, and to attempt to draw any lessons from such analysis, it may be well to recall the principal findings stated in that Committee�s oft-forgotten but invaluable Report with its wealth of evidence, statistical and otherwise. Three main conclusions were advanced: (1) there were, said the Committee, no offences for which long sentences of imprisonment were so ineffective as a deterrent that it is necessary, for the protection of society, to provide whatever additional element of deterrence may be afforded by the further penalty of whipping (para.

62); (2) all the available evidence failed to show that the introduction of a power of flogging has produced a decrease in the number of the offences for which it may be imposed, or that offences for which flogging may be ordered have tended to increase when little use was made of the power to order flogging, or to decrease when the power was exercised more frequently (para. 59); (3) the fear of corporal punishment does exercise a strong deterrent influence in restraining violent prisoners who would otherwise commit serious assaults on prison officers and that no other penalty would operate as an equal or sufficient deterrent (para. 75). What then is the available evidence in Northern Ireland[3] whereby to judge the soundness of the Committee�s findings? Of the wide range of multifarious crimes punishable by whipping under Northern Ireland law, the records since 1922 show three offences only in respect of which a sentence of whipping has been imposed. As the following table shows, judges in the troubled years of 1922 and 1923 used their statutory powers in a concerted attempt to stamp out political terrorists and to a degree which has not been repeated in recent years.

It is, moreover, not insignificant that no present member of the Supreme Court judiciary has ever imposed a sentence of flogging. [3] I have again to thank R.U.C. Headquarters and the Governor of H.M. Prison, Belfast, for providing me with a full record of all instances in which corporal punishment has been awarded by the Northern Ireland judges and for the subsequent criminal records of those so punished. Offence Folk law | Don't spare the rod | Solicitors Journal Twitter Linkedin Facebook Add comment The deliberate infliction of physical injury and pain as retribution for an offence has been employed since time immemorial and is still used today in some Middle Eastern jurisdictions and former British territories such as Botswana, Malaysia, Singapore and Tanzania. Here, I look at the significant changes to British corporal punishment from 1706, reflecting a period of liberal punitive reform that reached its zenith in 1948 when revulsion to physical pain in legal punishments led to the abolition of corporal punishment and formulation of a new criminal code focused on the use of prison as a deterrent and reformatory form of penalty.

In 1706, the penal authorities decided that felons convicted for burglary, house-breaking, robbery or stealing of horses, should no longer be “burnt in the most visible part of the left cheek nearest the nose” as this punishment “did not deter such offenders from further committing such crime and offences, but on the contrary, such offenders being rendered thereby unfit to be entrusted in any service or employment to get their livelihood in any honest and lawful way, become more desperate” (Preamble to the Statute of Anne 1706 c.56 CAP VI). After the Statute was passed on 14 February 1706, any person convicted of any theft or larceny was burned in the hand and committed to the workhouse for a period of six months to two years in lieu of having his face marked. Birching, whipping, flogging The beating of criminals – birching, whipping or flogging – was more common than branding as a form of corporal punishment and became popular in the 16th century. As whipping was intended as a strong deterrent influence on offenders (reserved mainly for the criminal classes), the punishment usually took place in public and the judgment could be awarded against both genders.

The indignity was greater for the female prisoner as those whipped were stripped to the waist before the skin was taken ?from their backs. Well meaning and right thinking reformers outraged at the thought of women suffering this humiliating treatment passed an Act of Parliament to abolish the punishment of public whipping on female offenders (57 G.3 c.75). Confinement to hard labour in the common gaol or house of correction replaced the sentence of a woman being publicly whipped. A further Act was passed on 15 July 1820, which immediately put an end to female offenders being whipped in private as well, but “imprisonment not exceeding six months, not less than one month; or solitary confinement for any space not exceeding the space of seven days at any one time…” was given in lieu. As mentioned above, Parliament traditionally considered whipping a very definite deterrent among the ‘criminal classes’. In Tudor times, beggars and vagabonds were whipped or set in the stocks for three days and three nights if caught begging in a certain precinct without the licence of the local magistrates (22. H.8. c.12-14).

While the subsequent Vagrancy Act of 1824 imposed a less painful penalty of three months’ hard labour, section 10 of that Act did empower the Justices of the Peace to order “…that such offender (not being a female) be punished by whipping, at such time during his imprisonment, and at such place within their jurisdiction, as according to the nature of the offence they in their discretion shall deem expedient.” Corporal punishment was also accepted as a suitable form of correction for young hooligans and juvenile delinquents (See ‘What the butler saw’, Solicitors Journal 155/16, 26 April 2011) but by the end of the Victorian era the number of offences that actually carried the penalty of whipping (for both adults and young offenders) ?were reduced to three: garrotting (under the Garrotters Act 1863), living off the immoral earnings of prostitutes and robbery ?with violence.

The sentence of whipping was finally abolished by section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 but many Members of the House of Commons who participated in the parliamentary debate leading to abolition shared the view of Brigadier Rayner (Member for Totnes) who said ‘a gangster, thug, sadistic brute, homeless, lawless and possibly hopeless offender who attacks should be allowed to feel the pain that they so wantonly inflicted’ and, 64 years later, there are many in society who believe that we should not spare the rod. Categorised in: Criminal Justice Act 1948 Criminal Justice Act 1948 View more Changes to legislation: There are outstanding changes not yet made by the legislation.gov.uk editorial team to Criminal Justice Act 1948. Any changes that have already been made by the team appear in the content and are referenced with annotations. Changes to Legislation Revised legislation carried on this site may not be fully up to date. Changes and effects are recorded by our editorial team in lists which can be found in the ‘Changes to Legislation’ area. Where those effects have yet to be applied to the text of the legislation by the editorial team they are also listed alongside the legislation in the affected provisions.

Use the ‘more’ link to open the changes and effects relevant to the provision you are viewing. Changes and effects yet to be applied to the whole Act associated Parts and Chapters: Changes and effects This section lists the changes and effects yet to be applied to the whole Act, associated Parts and Chapters where applicable. This includes any insertions of whole new Parts, Chapters or provisions yet to be inserted into this Act. These effects are included in this view as they may be (but won’t necessarily be) relevant to the specific provision that you are viewing. Abolition of penal servitude, hard labour, prison divisions and sentence of whippingE+W 1 Abolition of penal servitude, hard labour and prison divisions.E+W (1)No person shall be sentenced by a court to penal servitude; and every enactment conferring power on a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case shall be construed as conferring power to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of this Act.

(2)No person shall be sentenced by a court to imprisonment with hard labour; and every enactment conferring power on a court to pass a sentence of imprisonment with hard labour in any case shall be construed as conferring power to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the term for which a sentence of imprisonment with hard labour could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of this Act; and so far as any enactment requires or permits prisoners to be kept to hard labour it shall cease to have effect. (3)So far as any enactment provides that a person sentenced to imprisonment or committed to prison is or may be directed to be treated as an offender of a particular division, or to be placed in a separate division, it shall cease to have effect. 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F1 E+W Annotations: Annotations are used to give authority for changes and other effects on the legislation you are viewing and to convey editorial information. They appear at the foot of the relevant provision or under the associated heading.

Annotations are categorised by annotation type, such as F-notes for textual amendments and I-notes for commencement information (a full list can be found in the Editorial Practice Guide). Each annotation is identified by a sequential reference number. For F-notes, M-notes and X-notes, the number also appears in bold superscript at the relevant location in the text. All annotations contain links to the affecting legislation. Amendments (Textual) 3—12.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F2 E+W Annotations: Annotations are used to give authority for changes and other effects on the legislation you are viewing and to convey editorial information. They appear at the foot of the relevant provision or under the associated heading. Annotations are categorised by annotation type, such as F-notes for textual amendments and I-notes for commencement information (a full list can be found in the Editorial Practice Guide). Each annotation is identified by a sequential reference number. For F-notes, M-notes and X-notes, the number also appears in bold superscript at the relevant location in the text. All annotations contain links to the affecting legislation.

Amendments (Textual) 13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F3 E+W Annotations: Annotations are used to give authority for changes and other effects on the legislation you are viewing and to convey editorial information. They appear at the foot of the relevant provision or under the associated heading. Annotations are categorised by annotation type, such as F-notes for textual amendments and I-notes for commencement information (a full list can be found in the Editorial Practice Guide). Each annotation is identified by a sequential reference number. For F-notes, M-notes and X-notes, the number also appears in bold superscript at the relevant location in the text. All annotations contain links to the affecting legislation. Amendments (Textual) 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F4 E+W Annotations: Annotations are used to give authority for changes and other effects on the legislation you are viewing and to convey editorial information. They appear at the foot of the relevant provision or under the associated heading.

Annotations are categorised by annotation type, such as F-notes for textual amendments and I-notes for commencement information (a full list can be found in the Editorial Practice Guide). Each annotation is identified by a sequential reference number. For F-notes, M-notes and X-notes, the number also appears in bold superscript at the relevant location in the text. All annotations contain links to the affecting legislation. Amendments (Textual) 15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F5 E+W Annotations: Annotations are used to give authority for changes and other effects on the legislation you are viewing and to convey editorial information. They appear at the foot of the relevant provision or under the associated heading. Annotations are categorised by annotation type, such as F-notes for textual amendments and I-notes for commencement information (a full list can be found in the Editorial Practice Guide). Each annotation is identified by a sequential reference number. For F-notes, M-notes and X-notes, the number also appears in bold superscript at the relevant location in the text. All annotations contain links to the affecting legislation.

Amendments (Textual) Convict labour | Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing - eBooks | Read eBooks online e Penal labour is a form of unfree labour in which prisoners perform work, typically manual labour . The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence which involve penal labour include penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labour. The term may refer to several related situations: labour as a form of punishment, the prison system used as a means to secure labour, and labour as a form of occupation of convicts. These situations can be applied to those imprisoned for political, religious, war, or other reasons as well as to criminal convicts. Large-scale implementations of penal labour include labour camps , prison farms , and penal colonies . Contents 6 Further reading Punitive prison labour Punitive labour, also known as convict, prison, or hard labour, is a form of unfree labour used in both past and present as an additional form of punishment beyond imprisonment alone. Punitive labour occupies a spectrum between two types: productive labour, such as industrial work; and intrinsically pointless tasks used as primitive occupational therapy and/or physical torment. Sometimes authorities turn prison labour into an industry, as on a prison farm .

In such cases, the pursuit of income from their productive labour may even overtake the preoccupation with punishment and/or reeducation as such of the prisoners, who are then at risk of being exploited as slave-like cheap labour (profit may be minor after expenses, e.g. on security). On the other hand, in Victorian prisons, inmates commonly were made to work the treadmill : in some cases, this was productive labour to grind grain; in others, it served no purpose. Similar punishments included the crank machine (a device where prisoner had to turn a crank that merely pushed paddles through sand in a drum), and shot drill, carrying cannonballs around for no purpose. [1] Semi-punitive labour also included oakum -picking: teasing apart old tarry rope to make caulking material for sailing vessels. British Empire Further information: Penal Servitude Acts In the British Empire in the 19th century, hard labour became a standard feature of penal servitude as penal transportation was phased out. Although it was prescribed for severe crimes (e.g.

rape, attempted murder, wounding with intent, per the Offences against the Person Act 1861 ) it was also widely applied in cases of minor crime such as petty theft and vagrancy , as well as victimless behaviour deemed harmful to the fabric of society. Notable recipients of forced labour under British law include Oscar Wilde (after his conviction for gross indecency ) and John William Gott (a terminally ill trouser salesman convicted of blasphemy ). Labour was sometimes useful. In Inveraray Jail from 1839 prisoners worked up to ten hours a day. Most male prisoners made herring nets or picked oakum (Inveraray was a busy herring port); those with skills were often employed where the skills could be used, such as shoemaking, tailoring or joinery. Female prisoners picked oakum, knitted stockings or sewed. [1] Forms of labour for punishment included the treadmill , shot drill, and the crank machine. [1] Treadmills for punishment were used in prisons in Britain from 1818; they were like 20-foot paddle wheels with 24 steps around a six-foot cylinder.

Prisoners had to work six or more hours a day, climbing 5,000 to 14,000 vertical feet. While the purpose was mainly punitive, the mill could grind grain, pump water, or ventilate. [2] Shot drill involved stooping without bending the knees, lifting a heavy cannonball slowly to chest height, taking three steps to the right, replacing it on the ground, stepping back three paces, and repeating, moving cannonballs from one pile to another. [1] The crank machine was a machine with a handle that forced four large cups or ladles through sand inside a drum, doing nothing useful. Male prisoners had to turn the handle 14,400 times a day, as registered on a dial. The warder could make the task harder by tightening a screw, hence the slang term "screw" for prison warder. [1] The British penal colonies in Australia between 1788 and 1868 provide a major historical example of convict labour, as described above: during that period, Australia received thousands of transported convict labourers, many of whom had received harsh sentences for minor misdemeanours in Britain or Ireland .

The Penal Servitude Act 1853 (16 & 17 Vict. c.99) substituted penal servitude for transportation, except in cases where a person could be sentenced to transportation for life or for a term not less than 14 years. Section 2 of the Penal Servitude Act 1857 (20 & 21 Vict. c.3) [3] abolished the sentence of transportation in all cases and provided that in all cases a person who would otherwise have been liable to transportation would be liable to penal servitude instead. Sentences of penal servitude were served in convict prisons and were controlled by the Home Office and the Prison Commissioners. After sentencing, convicts would be classified according to the seriousness of the offence of which they were convicted and their criminal record. First time offenders would be classified in the Star class; persons not suitable for the Star class, but without serious convictions would be classified in the intermediate class; and habitual offenders would be classified in the Recidivist class. Care was taken to ensure that convicts in one class did not mix with convicts in another.

As late as 1885, 75% of all prison inmates were involved in some sort of productive endeavour, mostly in private contract and leasing systems. By 1935 the portion of prisoners working had fallen to 44%, and almost 90% of those worked in state-run programmes rather than for private contractors. [4] Section 1 of the Penal Servitude Act 1891 [5] makes provision for enactments which authorise a sentence of penal servitude but do not specify a maximum duration. It must now be read subject to section 1(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1948. England and Wales Penal servitude was abolished for England and Wales by section 1(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1948. [6] Every enactment conferring power on a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case must be construed as conferring power to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of that Act. Imprisonment with hard labour was abolished by section 1(2) of that Act.

Northern Ireland Penal servitude was abolished for Northern Ireland by section 1(1) of the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1953. [7] Every enactment which operated to empower a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case now operates so as to empower that court to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of that Act. Imprisonment with hard labour was abolished by section 1(2) of that Act. Scotland Penal Servitude was abolished for section 16(1) of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1949 on 12 June 1950. Imprisonment with hard labour was abolished by section 16(2) of that Act. Every enactment conferring power on a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case must be construed as conferring power to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before 12 June 1950.

But this does not empower any court, other than the High Court, to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term exceeding three years. See section 307(4) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 China In pre-Maoist China, a system of labor camps for political prisoners operated by the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek existed during the Chinese Civil War from 1938–1949. Young activists and students accused of supporting Mao Zedong and his Communists were arrested and re-educated in the spirit of anti-communism at the Northwestern Youth Labor Camp. [8] After the Communists took power in 1949 and established the People's Republic of China , laojiao ( Re-education through labor ) and laogai ( Reform through labor ) was (and still is in some cases) used as a way to punish political prisoners . They were intended not only for criminals, but also for those deemed to be counter-revolutionary (political and/or religious prisoners). [9] According to Al Jazeera special report on slavery, China has the largest penal labour system in the world today.

Often these prisoners are used to produce products for export to the West . [10] Japan Most Japanese prisoners are required to engage in prison labour, often in manufacturing parts which are then sold cheaply to private Japanese companies. This practice has raised charges of unfair competition since the prisoners' wages are far below market rate. The Netherlands (Hard) penal labour does not exist in the Netherlands, but a light variant (Dutch: taakstraf) is one of the four primary punishments that a committer of a crime can be sentenced to. [11] The person who is sentenced to a taakstraf must perform some service to the community. The maximum punishment is 240 hours, according to article 22c, part 2 of Wetboek van Strafrecht . [12] The labour must be done in his free time. Reclassering Nederland keeps track of those who were sentenced to taakstraffen. [13] [14] United States Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR or FPI) is a wholly owned United States government corporation created in 1934 that uses penal labour from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to produce goods and services.

FPI is restricted to selling its products and services to federal government agencies and has no access to the commercial market. [15] The 13th Amendment of the American Constitution in 1865 explicitly allows penal labour as it states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." [16] [17] Unconvicted detainees awaiting trial cannot be forced to participate in forced rehabilitative labour programs in prison as it violates the Thirteenth Amendment. But, the " convict lease " system became popular throughout the South following the American Civil War and into the 20th century. Since the impoverished state governments could not afford penitentiaries, they leased out prisoners to work at private firms. According to Douglas A. Blackmon , because of the revenue received by local governments, they had incentives to arrest blacks; tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested and leased to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations.

[18] In Florida, convicts were often sent to work in lumber camps and turpentine factories. [19] The state governments maximised profits by putting the responsibility on the lessee to provide food, clothing, shelter, and medical care for the prisoners, with little oversight. This resulted in extremely poor conditions, numerous deaths, and perhaps the most inhumane system of labour in the United States. [20] Reformers abolished convict leasing in the 20th-century Progressive Era , stopping the system in Florida in 1919. The last state to abolish the practice was Alabama in 1927. At the same time, labour has been required at many prisons, such as Parchman Farm in Mississippi, which operated as a for-profit plantation, which yielded revenues for the state from its earliest years. Prisoners were used to clear the dense growth in the Mississippi bottomland, and then to cultivate the land for agriculture. By the mid-20th century, it had 21,000 acres under cultivation. In the late 20th century, prison conditions were investigated under civil rights laws, when abuses of prisoners and harsh working conditions were exposed.

It was not until the 1970s that the state abandoned the for-profit aspect of its forced labour from convicts and planned to hire a professional penologist to head the prison. A state commission recommended reducing the size of acreage to what was needed simply to grow foodstuffs for the prison. [21] In 1934, however, federal prison officials concerned about growing unrest in prisons, lobbied to create a work program. Private companies got involved again in 1979, when Congress passed a law allowing them to hire prisoners in some circumstances. Penal labour is sometimes used as a punishment in the U.S. military . [22] Penal labour is not required in the United States, but refusal to work normally results in the inmate receiving less food, a longer sentence, or other sanctions. Republic of Ireland Penal servitude was abolished for the Republic of Ireland by section 11(1) of the Criminal Law Act, 1997.

[23] Every enactment conferring a power on a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case must be treated as an enactment empowering that court to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of the Criminal Law Act 1997. In the case of any enactment in force on the 5 August 1891 (the date on which section 1 of the Penal Servitude Act 1891 came into force) whereby a court had, immediately before the commencement of the Criminal Law Act 1997, power to pass a sentence of penal servitude, the maximum term of imprisonment may not exceed five years or any greater term authorised by the enactment. Imprisonment with hard labour was abolished by section 11(3) of that Act. Soviet Union Main articles: Gulag and Population transfer in the Soviet Union Another historically significant example of forced labour was that of political prisoners and other persecuted people in labour camps , especially in totalitarian regimes since the 20th century where millions of convicts were exploited and often killed by hard labour and bad living conditions.

For much of the history of the Soviet Union and other Communist states , political opponents of these governments were often sentenced to forced labour camps. The Soviet Gulag camps were a continuation of the punitive labour system of Imperial Russia known as katorga , but on a larger scale. Between 1930 and 1960, the Soviet regime created many Lager labour camps in Siberia and Central Asia . [24] [25] There were at least 476 separate camp complexes, each one comprising hundreds, even thousands of individual camps. [26] It is estimated that there may have been 5-7 million people in these camps at any one time. In later years the camps also held victims of Stalin’s purges as well as World War II prisoners . It is possible that approximately 10% of prisoners died each year. [27] Out of the 91,000 Germans captured alive after the Battle of Stalingrad , only 6,000 survived the Gulag and returned home. [28] Many of these prisoners, however, had died of illness contracted during the siege of Stalingrad and in the forced march into captivity.

[29] Probably the worst of the camp complexes were the three built north of the Arctic Circle at Kolyma , Norilsk and Vorkuta . [30] [31] Prisoners in Soviet labour camps were worked to death with a mix of extreme production quotas , brutality , hunger and the harsh elements. [32] In all, more than 18 million people passed through the Gulag , [33] with further millions being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union. [34] The fatality rate was as high as 80% during the first months in many camps. Immediately after the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II , the NKVD massacred about 100,000 prisoners who awaited deportation either to NKVD prisons in Moscow or to the Gulag. Michael McFaul , in his New York Times article of 11 June 2003, entitled 'Books of the Times; Camps of Terror, Often Overlooked', [35] has this to say about the state of contemporary dialogue on Soviet slavery: It should now be known to all serious scholars that the camps began under Lenin and not Stalin.

It should be recognized by all that people were sent to the camps not because of what they did, but because of who they were. Some may be surprised to learn about the economic function that the camps were designed to perform. Under Stalin, the camps were simply a crueler but equally inefficient way to exploit labor in the cause of building socialism than the one practiced outside the camps in the Soviet Union. Yet, even this economic role of the camps has been exposed before. What is remarkable is that the facts about this monstrous system so well documented in Applebaum's book are still so poorly known and even, by some, contested. For decades, academic historians have gravitated away from event-focused history and toward social history. Yet, the social history of the gulag somehow has escaped notice. Compared with the volumes and volumes written about the Holocaust, the literature on the gulag is thin. (The article draws attention to Anne Applebaum 's Pulitzer Prize winning text Gulag: A History [36] ) Non-punitive prison labour In a number of penal systems, the inmates have the possibility of a job. This may serve several purposes. One goal is to give an inmate a meaningful way to occupy their prison time and a possibility of earning some money.

It may also play an important role in resocialisation: inmates may acquire skills that would help them to find a job after release. It may also have an important penological function: reducing the cruel monotony of prison life for the inmate, keeping inmates busy on productive activities, rather than, for example, potentially violent or antisocial activities, and helping to increase inmate fitness, and thus decrease health problems, rather than letting inmates succumb to a sedentary lifestyle. [37] The classic occupation in 20th-century British prisons was sewing mailbags. This has diversified into areas such as engineering, furniture making, desktop publishing, repairing wheelchairs and producing traffic signs, but such opportunities are not widely available, and many prisoners who work perform routine prison maintenance tasks (such as in the prison kitchen) or obsolete unskilled assembly work (such as in the prison laundry) that is argued to be no preparation for work after release. [38] Classic 20th-century American prisoner work involved making license plates ; the task is still being performed by inmates in certain areas.

[39] A significant amount of controversy has arisen with regards to the use of prison labour if the prison in question is privatized , a phenomenon present in a few areas of the United States , where goods produced through penal labour are regulated through the Ashurst-Sumners Act which criminalizes the interstate transport of such goods. Many businesses, large and small, already make use of prison workshops to produce high quality goods and services and do so profitably. They are not only investing in prisons but in the future of their companies and the country as a whole. I urge others to follow their lead and seize the opportunity that working prisons offer. -- David Cameron , UK Prime Minister [40] Present-day prison work programmes and work release programmes may or may not be classed as penal labour (depending on whose definition is used—whether the punitive component is present), but one of the reasons why a high imprisonment rate perennially concerns some citizens is that people with socioeconomic power (business owners, lobbying their politicians) who develop an affinity for the cheapness of prison labour have an inherent conflict of interest that could easily give them incentive to find pretences for making sure that plenty of working-class people end up arrested and convicted, even if on minor charges.

This is because prison labour can be less expensive to their businesses than non-prison labour, and it can also depress wages for non-prison labour by competing economically against it. For example, in the US, metal fabrication work that normally commands wages in the USD 12–18 per hour range can sometimes be undertaken by prison or work release programmes at USD 5–8. The common sociological argument on this topic is a cui bono argument that perhaps socioeconomically dominant people have financial interests in maintaining a status quo in which there are many ways for the working poor to go astray of the law, and not so many for them to work their way out of poverty honestly. This argument has implications for the War on Drugs ; the fact that a common part of American ghetto culture is taking a risk at lucrative drug trade work and hoping not to get caught, in an environment of poor employment otherwise, looks suspicious from this view.

It shares aspects with debt bondage that was common in the 19th century, as, for example, brothel madams or coal mining companies would find ways to keep their workers [supposedly] in debt to them (" I owe my soul to the company store "), in order to apply coercive pressure to keep young women from leaving the prostitution business or to keep men from leaving their underpaid coal mine work. Although the people of U.S. business management and U.S. jurisprudence today would never agree that such motives drive their choices, the social-science argument is that society must be vigilant to keep subconscious conflict of interest from undermining attempts to improve socioeconomic conditions among the working poor. The advent of automated production in the 20th and 21st century has reduced the availability of unskilled physical work for inmates. ONE3ONE Solutions, formerly the Prison Industries Unit in Britain, has proposed the development of in-house prison call centers. [41] See also

Question: In England, what form of punishment was abolished by the Criminal Justice Act of 1948?
Answer: Hard labour