Established in 1853, after the end of penal transportation to Australia, the convict prison system and the sentence of penal servitude offered the most severe form of punishment – short of death – in the criminal justice system, and they remained in place for nearly a century.
Penal Servitude is the first comprehensive study to examine the convict prison system that housed all those who were sentenced to penal servitude during this time. Helen Johnston, Barry Godfrey, and David Cox detail the administration and evolution of the system, from its creation in the 1850s and the building of the prison estate to the classification of prisoners within it. Exploring life in the convict prison through the experiences of the people who were subjected to it, the authors shed light on various details such as prison diet, education, and labour. What they find reveals the internal regimes; the everyday endurances, conformity, resistance, and rule breaking of convicts; and the interactions with the warders, medical officers, and governors that shaped daily life in the system.
Reconstructing the life histories of hundreds of convict prisoners from detailed prison records, criminal registers, census data, and personal correspondence, Penal Servitude illuminates the lives of those who experienced long-term imprisonment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Helen Johnston is professor of criminology at the University of Hull.

Helen Johnston's profile page

Barry Godfrey is professor of social justice at the University of Liverpool.

Barry Godfrey's profile page

David J. Cox is reader in criminal justice history at the University of Wolverhampton.

David J. Cox's profile page

“Penal Servitude is the first book-length treatment of the penal servitude sanction [that] foregrounds convicts’ lives and the creation of ‘whole-life’ histories. Drawing on innovative archival approaches to tell the story from above and below … the authors take pains to lay bare the nature of penal shift and its evolution through the years of the convict system, demonstrating the messiness and contingency inherent in its existence.” Labour / Le Travail

“There is no other comprehensive study of the convict prison system in England and Wales during this period. Helen Johnston, Barry Godfrey, and David Cox have played a leading role in linking government records with other primary sources to understand a system as a whole, and they put this approach to good use here. Penal Servitude makes a major contribution to the field and is sure to become the standard work on the subject.” Neil Davie, Université Lumière, Lyon, and author of The Penitentiary Ten: The Transformation of the English Prison, 1770–1850

"This ambitious work aims to explain the origins, design and evolution of the convict prison system, how it worked and how it was experienced by the incarcerated. In this, it blends institutional and social history." Family & Community History