James Neild was a British prison reformer.

James Neild was born in Knutsford, Cheshire. He made a fortune as a jeweller and retired to Chelsea to become a philanthropist and campaigner, especially in the field of prison reform. In 1812, after inspecting a number of prisons, he published his State of Prisons in England, Scotland and Wales. Along with Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...

's Theorie des Peines et des Recompenses (1811), Neild's book helped to trigger parliamentary pressure for reform.

He was High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire

High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire

The High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, in common with other counties, was originally the King's representative on taxation upholding the law in Saxon times...

in 1804.

He had married, in 1778, the eldest daughter of John Camden of Battersea. They had two sons and a daughter. On his death he was succeeded by his younger son John Camden Neild, his elder son being disinherited and having gone abroad. John Camden Neild lived the life of a recluse and on his death in 1852 left the whole of his fortune to the Queen