Derek Bentley Debate

Derek Bentley’s case evidently highlighted the unjust nature of some punishments within Britain, in this case hangings and it could be argued that this case was one of the main reasons for the abolition of the death penalty. On the other hand, there were other individuals and acts that led to a change in attitudes such as the Criminal Justice Act of 1948 that led to the abolition of whippings among many other things. It cannot be stated that Bentley was the sole reason for changing attitudes, but his case was undoubtedly a ‘key turning point in changing attitudes to crime and punishment’.

Derek Bentley a 19-year-old child was hanged for a murder that he did not commit and the case elicited a social and political uproar that marks this change

Uschanov commented on the initial societal views affirming that the “sentiment of the public was clearly on his side, and petitions for mercy were signed by huge numbers of people, including 200 MPs from all parties.” This leads to the idea that the public and their attitudes were changing because they understood the sometimes unjust nature of the penal system and that if a grave miscarriage of justice did occur and a man was wrongfully hanged, then there is no way to go back on their decision, thus representing the case of Derek Bentley did lead to a change in attitudes in society. Furthermore, the quote evokes the message that parliament saw the injustice in the case and had decided to petition against the hanging of Bentley, but to no avail. Although their pleas did go unnoticed, it still represented how the government were starting to recognise that hangings, especially in convoluted cases like Bentley’s, should be

Jeremy Bentham had proposed the implementation of the panopticon to create the allusion of an all-seeing eye for the prison guards. Millbank prison, built in 1821, had been completed on lines by Bentham and by the 1830s, there were plans for many other prisons to be built in the same manner. Bloy states that, “it was thought that humanitarian methods used in prisons had failed and what was needed instead was a tougher and uniformly enforced system of prison discipline”, presenting the change in attitudes towards punishment within prisons. A reason for this was down to wanting to reduce recidivism and the government along with penal reformers felt that there was a need for prisoner reform, but also a ‘proper deterrent and punishment’. Through these new reforms came better living conditions, but also new punishments such as the crank, and treadwheel both mentally degrading to the prisoner. By the end of the 1840s the decision had been made that ‘prisoners were forbidden to talk to each other and were stripped of their identity’. This policy of the ‘separate system’ was a major development in the role of punishments throughout a multitude of prisons. Pentonville, erected in 1842, influenced ‘fifty-four other prisons’ that had been built on the ‘same plan’. In comparison to the case of Bentley and the outcomes of how society itself developed