The Penitentiary Act (19 Geo. III, c.74) was a British Act of Parliament passed in 1779 which introduced a policy of state prisons for the first time. The Act was drafted by the prison reformer

John Howard John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the ...

and the jurist

William Blackstone Sir William Blackstone (10 July 1723 – 14 February 1780) was an English jurist, judge and Tory politician of the eighteenth century. He is most noted for writing the ''Commentaries on the Laws of England''. Born into a middle-class family ...

and recommended imprisonment as an alternative sentence to

death Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...

transportation Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...

. The prison population in

England and Wales England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is En ...

had swollen following the initial fighting in the American Rebellion and the government's attendant decision, by the Criminal Law Act 1776 (16 Geo. 3 c.43), to temporarily halt use of the

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as the standard destination for transported criminals."An act to authorise, for a limited time, the punishment by hard labour of offenders who, for certain crimes, are or shall become liable to be transported to any of his Majesty's colonies and plantations."
/ref> As early as 1777, Howard had produced a report to a

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

select committee which identified appalling conditions in most of the prisons he had inspected. While the purpose of the Act had been to create a network of state-operated prisons, and despite its passage through

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

, the act resulted only in considerable study of methods, alternatives and possible locations; no prisons would be built as a direct result of the act, although the prison network and alternatives would be created over time.

References

Great Britain Acts of Parliament 1779 Penal system in the United Kingdom {{UK-law-stub