In the spirit of the recent criminal history Monday and the interesting thread on the abolition of capital punishment in England, I wonder if there might be any demonstrable link between recidivism and the nature of punishment in England during the Victorian age of reform?

With the cessation of transportation and introduction of probation, Darwinian ideas of criminal heredity gaining currency, Lombroso, and penal reform, there're hundreds of distinct threads that might have had an influence. Is it possible to identify any marked influence of punishment-type on habitual reoffence in this big continuum beyond the vague deterrent effect that's so often referred to?