Quakers played a leading role in penal reform and in America they were the first to marry utilitarian and religious approaches in the design and management of prisoners and in developing non-physical means of discipline. This chapter considers the ways which Quakers were drawn to penal reform through the rise of Evangelical Quakerism, which encouraged the rediscovery of the more active face of Christianity, and the visitation of ministers bearing ‘concerns’, including Stephen Grellet. At home Mrs Elizabeth Fry was an advocate for women prisoners, including those sentenced to transportation. In the colonies, Quakers provided a service to government with evidence-based assessments of a working system without judgement or challenge to just authority. James Backhouse and George Washington Walker supported Arthur's regime in Van Diemen's Land. Unlike the extreme, Evangelical advocates of the separate system, they showed their enlightened and utilitarian principles by also approving productive work and the efficient use of convict labour. Their close inspection of the penal stations in Australia led Backhouse and Walker to consider that reformation could occur in well-managed penal colonies as well as in home-based penitentiaries.