Speculating about sustainable punishment: British central officials and Jeremy Bentham, 1775–87

This article examines certain ideas proposed by central officials and by Jeremy Bentham to improve Britain’s prison capacity at a time when the American Revolutionary War upended existing practice. Between 1775 and 1787, central officials encouraged local authorities to support prison improvement projects, but the demand to remove prisoners out of local institutions, and the failed plan to establish two large, centrally funded prisons in 1782, decisively shaped the official preference for resuming penal transportation to a new colony over the idea of institutionalized penal labour at home. Meanwhile, in response to these events, Bentham developed an idea of combining penal labour with a theory of inspection – the famous Panopticon – and tried to implement this idea in Britain. Facing the same problem, Bentham and the officials reached different solutions, which reflects the complicated situation and lived dimensions of European Enlightenment.