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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2009
Bentham was an influential thinker with an ‘essentially practical mind’. His influence on British social and political reform, however, was indirect, coming largely after his death and largely through the work of his disciples. Bentham's own attempts to put his ideas directly into practice generally had little effect. He came closest to success in the area of penal policy, winning a contract from Pitt's government in the early 1790s to build and manage a penitentiary that was to be organized on the panopticon principle. Bentham saw the penitentiary as the spearhead of prison reform and as a means of effecting a change from transportation to imprisonment as a punishment for serious crime. While Bentham's use of the panopticon principle itself has attracted most attention in the literature, there was more to his scheme than this. The penitentiary proposals were worked out in great detail, they were a conscious application of his theory of punishment, and they were consistent with and an element of his all-embracing plan of social, political, and constitutional reform.
1 John Stuart Mill's description of Bentham in an essay reprinted in Jeremy Bentham: Ten Critical Essays, ed. Parekh, Bhikhu, London, 1974, p 5.Google Scholar
2 Reprinted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring, John, 11 vols., Edinburgh, 1838–1843, iv. 1–35.Google Scholar
3 Reference here is to the definitive text edited by Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A. for The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, London, 1970.Google Scholar
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5 A detailed account of Bentham's efforts on behalf of the penitentiary project is given in Hume, L. J., ‘Bentham's Panopticon: An Administrative History’, Historical Studies, xv (1973), 703–21, and xvi (1974), 36–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 The three pamphlets, Panopticon: or, the Inspection-House and Panopticon Postscript, Parts I and II, are reprinted in Bowring, , iv. 37–172.Google Scholar
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13 Bentham, to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, 19 06 1800Google Scholar, The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. vi, ed. Dinwiddy, J. R., Oxford, 1984 (CW), pp. 316–19Google Scholar. See also Bowring, , iv. 203.Google Scholar
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18 Later published as Panopticon versus New South Wales; reprinted in Bowring, , iv. 173–248.Google Scholar
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21 Ibid., 6.
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23 Ibid., 174–76.
24 Ibid., 177.
25 Collins, David, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, 2 vols., London, 1798–1802Google Scholar. The second volume appeared when Bentham's work on the Letters was well advanced. Reference here is to the reprint edited by Fletcher, B. H. (Sydney, 1975).Google Scholar
26 Bowring, , iv. 177.Google Scholar
27 Collins, , Account of New South Wales, i, p. xxxviii.Google Scholar
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31 This was Bentham's opinion in View of the Hard-Labour Bill (1778)Google Scholar. See Bowring, , iv. 7.Google Scholar
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37 Ibid., 191–94.
38 Ibid., 183.
39 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (CW), pp. 158–59.Google Scholar
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44 What follows is based on my paper, ‘Luxury in Punishment: Jeremy Bentham on the Cost of the Convict Colony in New South Wales’, Australian Historical Studies, xxiii (1988), 42–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
45 The material on New South Wales occupies pp. 21–8 of the Report on Police and Convicts. The sheets at UC cxlix. 121–30, 132, and 134 are effectively pp. 23–7Google Scholar of the report. An early draft of p. 22 is on the back of UC cvii. 172Google Scholar. Some material from UC cxlix. 136–45Google Scholar appears in a heavily edited form on p. 28 of the report.
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50 Reprinted in Bowring, , iv. 249–84.Google Scholar
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