Rehabilitating homes and humans: probation, gender and domesticity in Britain, 1907–1960

Abstract

The concept of ‘home’ has been central to probation theory and practice in Britain ever since the 1907 Probation Act introduced probation as an alternative to fines and prison sentences. Rather than sending people to prison, the home was considered a more suitable environment for facilitating long-term reform and rehabilitation. However, the home had to live up to certain physical and psychological standards if this approach was to work. This article explores the ways in which probation officers’ efforts to reform probationers’ homes and behaviours within the domestic sphere impacted the everyday lives and gender relations of probationers and their families, and played a crucial role in promoting certain normative concepts of what a ‘good home’ and a ‘healthy’ domestic relationship should look like.