Sir Joshua Jebb, KCB (8 May 1793 – 26 June 1863) was a British officer of the Royal Engineers who participated in the Battle of Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain during the War of 1812,[2] He became Surveyor-General of convict prisons.

[3][4] Michael Ignatieff described Pentonville as "the culmination of a history of efforts to devise a perfectly rational and reformative mode of imprisonment".

He was born at Chesterfield on 8 May 1793, the eldest son of Joshua Jebb of Walton Hall, Derbyshire and his wife Dorothy, daughter of General Henry Gladwin of Stubbing Court.

[7] His sister Frances married William Miles (1797–1844), a shipowner and West India merchant, and bought the estate of Firbeck Hall which was later inherited by his descendants.

Jebb was appointed adjutant of the royal sappers and miners at Chatham on 11 February 1831, and promoted first captain on 10 January 1837.

[1] On 10 March 1838 Jebb was appointed by the Lord President of the council to hold inquiries on the grants of charters of incorporation to Bolton and Sheffield, and on 21 May of the same year he was made a member of the commission on the municipal boundary of Birmingham.

In 1837 inquiries conducted in America by Crawford had led to the adoption in principle of the "separate system" of prison discipline.

[1] Beginning with a period of strict separation at Pentonville, the convicts were then to be passed to a prison constructed with a view to their employment on public works.

[1] In 1843–4 Jebb erected a terrace of houses, part of Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight: Nicholson Street, now listed buildings.

[1] In 1844, Jebb was appointed a member of a royal commission to report on the punishment of military crime by imprisonment.

Jebb died suddenly on 26 June 1863 in Charing Cross, London, coming off the omnibus from Parson's Green, where he resided,[11] and was buried in Brookwood Cemetery.