Catalogue description Home Office: Prison Department: General (PDG Symbol Series) Files

These policy files relate to the management and administration of prisons, detention centres, remand centres and borstals.

They cover a variety of subjects including prison security, categorisation of prisoners, treatment of prisoners, prisoners' complaints, sentences, prison disturbances, disciplinary matters, prison officers and staff, minutes of meetings of the Prison Department Committee and other groups, planning and development, including the prison building programme in the 1970s, and annual reports of prison governors and Boards of Visitors and Visiting Committees.

Prisons correspondence and papers are in HO 20, entry books are in HO 21 and HO 22, registers and returns are in HO 8, HO 9, HO 23 and HO 24, and staff appointment books are in HO 160. Memoranda to establishments are in HO 323, records of prison graves in HO 324, and specimens of prisoner records in HO 336. Further records of the Prison Department are in PCOM.

Home Office, 1782-

Home Office, Prison Department, 1963-

from 2007 Ministry of Justice

from 2001 Home Office

The PDG Series was the Prison Department policy series concerning the administration of prisons and prisoners.