In Illiterate Inmates: Educating Criminals in Nineteenth Century England, Rosalind Crone expertly reconstructs the history of a radical idea that emerged in the second decade of the nineteenth century in England: the provision of education to accused and convicted criminals in prisons. Indeed, the largest share of adult education provision overall seems to have come from local and convict prisons, yet historians of education have generally overlooked the role of the English prison as a place offering instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Compellingly demonstrating the prison’s centrality “as a site for the acquisition and improvement of literacy and numeracy in the nineteenth century” (16), Crone thus makes a significant and original contribution to extant scholarly literature on education in this period.

The history of education in the English penal system does not lend itself easily to scholarly examination. It also defies any simplistic explanations that could be neatly tied together into a straightforward narrative. Crucially, it goes against the idea of the progressive development of a rehabilitative penal project based on a new pedagogical ethos. In reality—as is always the case—things were much more complex, and this is reflected in Crone’s densely written chapters. The story Crone presents is partly a positive one: the 1823 Gaols Act incorporated a “reading and writing” clause which eventually paved the path to an almost-annual increase in the number of prisons with education programs until the 1880s (14). Yet under the surface of this “overarching story of expansion” there lies another that, as Crone recognizes, “is far more complicated but sheds valuable light on the problems of the rehabilitative project in the modern prison” (15). Drawing on an impressive range of printed as well as archival sources, over which Crone demonstrates clear mastery, the story that emerges is one “of dashed hopes and expectations, as the ambitions of the proponents of prison education clashed with the realities of imprisonment” (15). That the prison school in England rose and fell during the nineteenth century is at the heart of Crone’s argument and is embodied in the book’s tripartite outline: “Growth, c. 1800–1857,” “Uncertainty, c. 1850–c. 1880,” and “Retreat, c. 1868–c. 1899.”

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, many reformers came to see education as a panacea for society’s ills. Education seemed to provide the key to civilize and discipline individuals while imparting religious and moral instruction. This led to “a broader mass literary project” (15), which also affected prisons. Indeed, as Crone rightly notes, the emerging worlds of national education and prison education shared the same reformist context, given that those who campaigned for penal reform were often the same stakeholders seeking the extension of elementary education to the masses. The first prison schools in England emerged on board convict hulks during the first decade of the nineteenth century; eventually schools began to appear in both local and convict prisons. By 1847, more than fifty percent of prisons had education programs. The collection and redevelopment of data measuring prisoner literacy coincided with the emergence of the statistical movement in the 1830s. Crone picks up the rather slow pace of the first two chapters in the following two, where she provides fascinating insights into the evolution of the prison school. The early method of informal mutual instruction among inmates, allowing them to teach themselves, largely declined because it became “wholly incompatible with the penal environment,” given the “silence and separation” system (94). The number of prison libraries increased during the 1840s, and teachers were appointed to provide an alternative to allowing prisoners to teach themselves. Chaplains and professional schoolmasters played a central role in the evolution of the prison school, but considerations of space—such as the need to limit physical contact between prisoners—as well as problems of time and labor—for instance, when scheduled prison labor clashed with school—presented significant challenges.

Though most contemporaries initially believed in the decriminalizing potential of scholarly instruction, toward the middle of the nineteenth century this gave way to a growing feeling of pessimism because national crime rates showed no signs of improvement. But, as Crone argues, this did not mark the end of educational programs in prisons. Prison schools even survived the rise of the idea of punishment in the penal philosophy of the 1860s. Although new rules conceptualized “illiteracy as something to be punished” (194), they seem to have provided inmates with “some control over their destiny, and their classes and badges were evidence of their development of self-discipline” (192). Nonetheless, the desire of penal policymakers, administrators, and officials to reinforce the punitive and deterrent aspects of the prison—something which found its apotheosis in Edward Du Cane’s “cruel, retributionist penal regime”—weakened the project of education provision and its rehabilitative ethos (308). Given this context, Crone contends that the period c. 1868–c. 1899 was defined by retreat, though the agenda of penal administrators continued to include education. One of the reasons for this was the beginning of universal and compulsory elementary schooling. The demise of the Du Cane regime and the rise of humanitarian and other ideas led to further reforms in the 1890s, including the establishment of the Gladstone Committee in 1895, which recommended the improvement and expansion of education, particularly in local prisons. Yet, as Crone shows, the prison “continued to be shaped by an overriding concern to preserve the retributive aims of imprisonment”; it was, after all, “still a place of punishment” (336).

Crone has written an impressively researched, nuanced, and well-argued book that deserves to be read widely and should be essential reading for historians of education and those interested in penal history. Victorianists and social historians will also find in it much that is worthwhile. The book’s eclectic visual sources, including images of prison registers and classrooms, enliven its often-hefty empirical analysis and textual thickets, while offering the reader a more vivid understanding of the topic. The copious notes and tables in the book’s appendices amount to an invaluable resource and reference guide that will be of interest to both scholars and students wishing to research this topic further.