Note 7 — The Convict out in the World.

The annual report of the Directors of Convict Prisons for 1860, published recently, more than confirms the report which I made to you, and which was published in your April number. The excellent working and progress of the Irish system continue with increasing force. The Government prisons contain accommodation for 3,000 convicts; the total number incarcerated in the first year of the new system, 1854, exclusively of the 345 convicts in the county prisons, and several hundreds in Bermuda or Gibraltar, was 3,933, and it has decreased, by a steady progress, to 1,492. In 1861 the number convicted has decreased from 710 to 331. This is the more remarkable, since the deportation of convicts from Ireland ranged from 600 to 1,540 in the five years preceding 1854. Out of 5,500 convicts discharged in the last seven years, 1,462 were discharged on licence; 89 licences have been revoked, amounting to seven per cent. “We do not,” say the Directors, “believe a single case can be proved of a convict having been reported for infringing the condition of his licence, and still remaining at large in this country.”