England and Wales

Imprisonment is the harshest penalty available to the courts of England and Wales, since the death penalty was abolished for murder in 1969. Currently, around 110,000 offenders are each year committed to the 137 institutions that make up the prison system, providing employment for more than 43,000 staff to keep them there. All of this stands in stark contrast to the situation just over 50 years ago, when, in 1946, there were about 40 prisons, approximately 15,000 prisoners, and around 2,000 staff (Morgan, 2002, p. 1117). The reasons for this striking increase are complex, yet there is considerable consensus that the prison system in England and Wales has been in a state of ever-deepening crisis since the early 1970s.

Even though conclusions drawn from international comparisons should always be treated with caution, it is clear that England and Wales consistently use imprisonment to a greater extent than practically every other country in Western Europe. [Page 291]In 2002, for instance, 139 persons were incarcerated per 100,000 population in England and Wales, compared to 96 in Germany, 95 in Italy, 93 in the Netherlands, and 68 in Sweden (Walmsley, 2003, p. 5). Such crude comparisons also indicate that England and Wales lie behind the global leaders in imprisonment—Russia, the United States, China, and South Africa—as well as most of the countries in Eastern Europe. Of course, these international differences can only be properly explained through separate and detailed analyses of the political changes, cultural sensibilities, economic landscapes, and social histories that each of these societies has experienced. Such a task is beyond the scope of this entry; instead the more modest ambition is to chart the historical origins of imprisonment and provide an overview of contemporary problems that sustain the prison crisis.