‘Terror to Evil-Doers’: Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario by Peter Oliver (review)

562 The Canadian Historical Review 'Terror to Evil-Doers': Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario. PETER OLIVER. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1998. Pp. xxviii, 575, illus. $75.00 cloth, $45.00 paper Peter Oliver's 'Terror to Evil-Doers': Prisons and Punishment in NineteenthCentury Ontario is a fine piece of historical work that analyzes an entire century ofprisons, punishment, and confinement in Ontario. Despite its considerable length, the book manages to span the decades and the varieties ofjails and prisons in the province with aplomb and surprising brevity and conciseness. Oliver has compiled a well-evidenced text that is summational and critically involved, a benefit for those just visiting the book or for those interested in intimately exploring the history ofprisons and punishment Upper Canada/Ontario style. The chapters are ordered so that each can be approached as a stand-alone piece, the primary source material is myriad and logically and critically used, the plates are minimal with some internal narrative (witness the businesslike manner ofthe public execution, for example), and the statistics and the writing are clear without being overly didactic. Considering the ambitiousness of the project, Oliver has struck the right chord stylistically and argumentatively . Two broad related historical themes recur throughout the book. The first and most pervasive is the link Oliver makes between the social history ofOntario in the nineteenth century and the evolution ofvarious jails and forms of incarceration. The nature and population of the generally impoverished local jails reflected the priority given these tiny institutions in a time ofcharacteristicallychallenged rural economies and societies. Parsimony and neglect went hand in hand when the sequestered and parochial communities of Upper Canada turned to more important issues of income security, industrial expansion, and political stability. In the minds of Ontarians, derelicts, ne'er-do-wells, and assorted offenders of the public good were to be removed from society, with little consensus on rehabilitative theory and policy, on how to deal with the inmates once inside the jails and prisons (hard or contractual labour, isolation, idleness, or education?), or on how to address the chronic recidivism once released. The Central Prison in Toronto was constructed out of an institutional gap between the widely discrepant local jails and the new Kingston penitentiary, and especially out of a social need to curb repeat offenders, those who habitually violated the law. The elusive and relatively unimportant solution to the pressing question ofthe rehabilitation ofthis cohort of social offenders created a vacuum ofresponsibility and action on the part ofprison administrators, Book Reviews 563 making 'life in the ... prison ... characterized by a maximum ofviolence and a minimum ofgood-will and cooperation.' Oliver's tome is much ado about nothing: rarely has a book done such a comprehensive and consummate job in detailing failure. The book is refreshingly non-hagiographic. The second theme is the numerous largely abortive attempts at substantial prison and jail reform throughout the century by usually well-meaning and intellectually flexible administrators , commissioners, and inspectors whose judicious recommendations were thwarted by a regional government or a provincial political culture of mostly middle- and upper-class Tory Protestants. Politicians, bureaucrats, city and town councils, and community leaders were unaware or uncaring ofprison legislation and movements elsewhere, or too parsimonious and acutely sensitive to residual parochial social values and collective industrial labour needs to affect any real change. Many jails remained dilapidated, punishment was synonymous with rehabilitation , and prisoners remained enervated. Despite the efforts of enlightened reformers and the moderately and sporadically successful work of the Prisoners' Aid Association and the Salvation Army, improvements in prison conditions were slow and arduous, and any efficacious policy was introduced only well into the twentieth century. This book is undoubtedly instructive, but not without some minor questions of organization and critical methodology. Although not chronological, the section on the penitentiary may have fit equally well after the study ofthe intermediate prisons, giving a sense ofinstitutional mission and administrative centralization by stages. As well, in his rebuttal to some feminist writing on the detrimental 'separate spheres' of prison rehabilitation according to gender, Oliver's contention that the Mercer Prison for Women was not 'the alleged spectacle of feminism constrained' is somewhat generalized and unexplicative...