Front matter

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

THE

ENGLISH PRISON SYSTEM

BY

Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, K.C.B.

CHAIRMAN OF THE PRISON COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES

AND

PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL PRISON COMMISSION

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1921

COPYRIGHT

LIST OF CHAPTERS.

PAGE.

Preface i

CHAPTER.

I. The Meaning of Prison Reform 1

II. The Prison Commission: Offences, and Punishments 18

III. The History of Penal Servitude 23

IV. Penal Servitude to-day 39

V. Preventive Detention 49

VI. Imprisonment 59

VII. The Inquiry of 1894: the Prison Act, 1898: and the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914. 75

VIII. The Borstal System 85

IX. The Handmaids of the Prison System— (1) The Children Act, 1898; (2) The Probation Act, 1907. 101

X. Female Offenders 114

XI. Educative, Moral, and Religious Influences in Prison 124

XII. Labour in English Prisons 131

XIII. (1) Vagrancy; (2) Inebriety 142

XIV. "Patronage" or Aid to Discharged Prisoners: its effect on Recidivism 164

XV. The Medical Service 185

XVI. A Criminological Inquiry in English Prisons 198

XVII. (a) A Short Sketch of the Movement of Crime since 1872: (b) The War, 1914-18. 216

Appendix:—(a) Regulations &c., for Borstal Institutions 231

(b) Regulations for Preventive Detention Prisons 265

Index 268

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

Preface i

CHAPTER I.—THE MEANING OF "PRISON REFORM." 1

"Prison Reform"—a phrase of many meanings. The aim of the modern prison administration. The prison population. Influences operating for "reform" in prisons—religious services, visitation, education, lectures and addresses, summary of weekly news of the world, &c. No 'law of silence' strictly so-called: talking exercise in prisons, &c. Non-criminal persons committed under special legislation during the war—the prison system not intended for such. Officers of prisons and their power of influence for good. The special categories of the Borstal lad, and the 'habitual offender' at Camp Hill. The three directions along which 'prison reform' might proceed,—the organization and development of Probation: the extension of the principle of Preventive Detention to the Penal Servitude system: the co-ordination of preventive efforts.

CHAPTER. II.—THE PRISON COMMISSION: OFFENCES, AND PUNISHMENTS. 18

Constitution of Prison Board. Establishments under control of Prison Board. The criminal law and its a administration, punishments, &c. Probation Act, 1907. Court of Criminal Appeal.

CHAPTER III.—THE HISTORY OF PENAL SERVITUDE. 23

History of Transportation. Pentonville Prison. Public Works. Penal Servitude Act, 1857. Progressive Stage System. The Irish System. Royal Commission, 1863. The Penal Servitude Act, 1864. Mark System introduced. Habitual Criminals Act, 1869. Prevention of Crimes Act, 1871. The Royal Commission, 1878. The Star Class. Fall in convict population.

CHAPTER IV.—PENAL SERVITUDE TO-DAY. 39

The Inquiry of 1894. Progressive Stage System recast. New classification of 1905. Weakminded convicts. Separate Confinement, history of. Changes in system under the Act of 1898. Corporal punishment. Penal Servitude for Women.

CHAPTER V.—PREVENTIVE DETENTION. 49

Definition of professional criminals. Proposed Habitual Offenders' Division. The Act of 1908. Camp Hill Prison. Rules for treatment of prisoners. Release on Licence. Statistics of Releases. The Advisory Committee. The Intention of the System.

CHAPTER VI.—IMPRISONMENT. 59

Houses of Correction. Local Prisons and their administration. The phrase 'Hard Labour.' Howard and English Prisons. The Act of 1778 and separate confinement. Jeremy Bentham and the 'Panopticon.' Classification under the Act of 1823. Mr. Crawford's visit to U.S.A. Classification, the leading principle of reform. Inquiries of 1832 and 1836. Auburn and Philadelphian systems. The Act of 1839 and separate confinement. The model prison at Pentonville. Local Prisons and the control of Secretary of State. Surveyor-General appointed. Separate Confinement and Hard Labour, and the objects of imprisonment. Committee of 1850 and uniformity. Prison Act, 1865. Uniformity not secured. Centralization of Prisons under Act of 1877. Powers of Justices under. Classification and the objects and effect of Act of 1877.

CHAPTER VII.—THE INQUIRY OF 1894: THE PRISON ACT 1898: AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE ADMINISTRATION ACT, 1914. 75

Appointment of Committee and its report. Public opinion and the treatment of crime. Subsequent reforms in system. Retirement of Sir E. Du Cane and appointment of Sir E. Ruggles-Brise. Prison Rules and Administration. Triple Division and individualisation of prisoners. Part-payment of fines. Corporal punishment. Power to earn remission of sentence. Gratuity and remission of sentence.

CHAPTER VIII.—BORSTAL SYSTEM. 85

Its Origin. Statistics of youths committed annually. The Committee of 1894. The Colony at Stretton, 1815. "The Philanthropic Institution." The Reformatory School Act, 1854. The Colony of Mettray. The Age of 16 and criminal majority. Visit to the American State Reformatory at Elmira. The London Prison Visitors' Association, and first experiments at Borstal: the features of the early System. Representation to Secretary of State. Statutory effect given to System in 1908. The Institution for males and females to-day. "Modified System" and Borstal Committee System in Convict Prisons. The Borstal System, and its extension under the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914.

CHAPTER IX.—THE HANDMAIDS OF THE PRISON SYSTEM. 101

(1) THE CHILDREN ACT, 1908.

(2) THE PROBATION ACT, 1907.

(1) The Children Act, and age of criminal responsibility. Juvenile Courts, statistics of. Physically and mentally defective children. The Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Acts, 1899 and 1914. Juvenile Employment Bureaux and Labour Exchanges. The Elementary Education Act 1918. The Value of Voluntary personal service directed to the young.

(2) The Provisional Sentence abroad. The English law of Probation: Extent of its application: the Law prior to 1907. Difficulties of comparison of the various Systems. Probation in State of New York: Direct control and supervision by the State.

CHAPTER X.—FEMALE OFFENDERS. 114

The fall in committals to prison. The heavy rate of Recidivism. Formation of the Lady Visitors' Association, its duties, &c. The Borstal System at Aylesbury, and the work of the Ladies' Committee of the Borstal Association. The "Modified" Borstal System; Instructions regulating the class; Extension of Borstal System under Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914. Female recidivism, and the need for adoption of the principle of the reformatory sentence, and the formation of a State Reformatory. Superintendence and control of female prisoners by women.

CHAPTER XI.—EDUCATIVE, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES IN PRISON. 124

Education in prisons before Education Act, 1870: comparative statistics of degree of education of prisoners: large number of illiterate prisoners: present system of education and teaching staff: prison libraries, lectures, debates, missions: the work of Chaplains.

CHAPTER XII.—LABOUR IN ENGLISH PRISONS. 131

Changes in system due to reduction of convicts. Less Public Works labour. Competition with free labour. Contract system unknown in English Prisons. Character of present work in Convict Prisons. Medical census of convicts' fitness for work. The last Public Works, Dover Harbour. Character of Convict Prison labour approximating more to that of Local Prisons. Inquiry of 1863, and labour in Local Prisons. 'Hard Labour' of two classes. The Prison Act, 1877. Abolition of unproductive labour, and inquiry of 1894. Revision of Labour Statistics. Improvement in output of manufacture since 1896. Unskilled labour. Reorganization of female labour, 1911. Work for Government Departments. Work during the War. The work of Juvenile-Adult prisoners.

CHAPTER XIII.—(1) VAGRANCY: (2) INEBRIETY. 142

(1) Early history of Vagrancy legislation. The Act of 1824. Categories of Vagrants. The casual pauper. Casual wards. Alleged attractiveness of prison to workhouse: Commissioners' observations on. Committee of 1906 and need for uniformity in casual wards, &c. Merxplas Colony. Labour Colonies and the Inquiry of 1903. Identification of habitual vagrants. Treatment of Vagrancy abroad. Great fall in number convicted of Vagrancy offences. The way ticket system. Casual Wards of Metropolis and Metropolitan Asylums Board. High number of convictions of vagrants. No plan yet adopted by State for dealing with professional vagrancy.

(2) Committee of 1872. Act of 1879. Inquiry of 1892. Principles of the Act of 1898. Establishment of State Inebriate Reformatories. Character of inmates. Control of State Reformatories. Commitments under the Act. The working of the Act. Committee appointed in 1908 to inquire into Inebriates and Probation. Causes operating against wider use of powers under Act. Inebriety as a factor of crime. Dr. Branthwaite's inquiry into a number of cases. Mental deficiency obvious in many. Condemnation of short sentences of imprisonment. Habitual inebriety and mental defectiveness. Report of Committee of 1908.

CHAPTER XIV.—"PATRONAGE" OR AID TO DISCHARGED PRISONERS: ITS EFFECT ON RECIDIVISM. 164

Former system of aid to discharged convicts. Gratuity system different from 'cantine' or 'pécule' system. Early history of aid to local discharged prisoners. Provisions made by Acts of 1862 and 1865. System under Act of 1877. Inquiry of Committee of 1894 and recommendations. Scheme of 1897. Formation of 'Central Association.' Discontinuance of Convict Gratuity System. New scheme for aid of Local prisoners, 1913. The Central Organization of Aid Societies; Aid to wives and families of prisoners. Proposed National Society for Prevention of Crime, and protection of the young offender. Aid on discharge from Borstal Institutions and Preventive Detention Prisons.

CHAPTER XV.—THE MEDICAL SERVICE. 185

Personnel of the Medical Staff; duties. Sickness and low death rate in Prisons. Prisons described as the best sanatoria in England. Infectious disease. Venereal disease. Prison dietary. Insanity and mental defectiveness, estimated rates of; the Mental Deficiency Act, 1913. The 'Birmingham' experiment for mental investigation of remand prisoners. The Borstal System and physical development. The clinical laboratory; "Study-leave" for Medical Officers. The nursing of sick prisoners.

CHAPTER XVI.—A CRIMINOLOGICAL INQUIRY IN ENGLISH PRISONS. 198

The nature of the inquiry. Professor Lombroso and the postulate of the 'Positive' School. The Lombrosian doctrine founded upon observation alone. The science of statistics: 'Normal' and 'abnormal' man. The 'criminal diathesis:' The biometric method of Professor Karl Pearson. Anthropometry and the existence of a criminal type. Comparison of statistics of criminals and non-criminal public. Dr. Goring's conclusion that there is no physical criminal type. 'Selective' factors and the physique of criminals. No 'mental criminal type.' Statistics of mental defectiveness. Defective physique and defective intelligence in selection of criminals. Heredity and other environmental factors. The relation between education and crime. Alcoholism. Conclusions as to the causes of crime. The criminal a "defective" man. His inability to live up to required social standard. The need for individualization of punishment. The Mental Deficiency Act, 1913.

CHAPTER XVII.— (A) A SHORT SKETCH OF THE MOVEMENT OF CRIME SINCE 1872: (B) THE WAR 1914-18. 216

(A) Classification of offences proceeded against in Criminal Courts. Fall in serious crime since 1871. Decrease of non-indictable offences of a criminal nature. Statistics of non-criminal offences. Prison Population, statistics since 1881. Decrease in total number of sentences to Penal Servitude. Great decrease in prisoners under 21 years of age. Statistics of recidivism. Petty Recidivism and vagrants and mentally defective persons in prisons.

(B) Prison statistics during the War: the effect of the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914, and payment of fines. Statistics of the decrease in various offences. The effect of the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic) and committals for Drunkenness. The great fall in Vagrancy. Criminal statistics in times of industrial prosperity and distress. Closing of penal institutions during the War. Statistics of charges tried and proceeded against. The maintenance in the future of the present low criminal population.

Appendix:—

(a) Regulations &c., for Borstal Institutions. 231

(b) " " Preventive Detention Prisons. 265

Index 268

PREFACE.

In October, 1910, I conveyed to the International Prison Congress at Washington the invitation of the British Government to hold the next Quinquennial Congress of 1915 in London. The invitation was accepted with enthusiasm. The London Congress of 1872 had prepared the way for the creation of the International Commission, which was founded a few years later; but, though supported and encouraged by the Government of the day, it owed its origin to American influence, notably that of the celebrated Dr. Wines. Great Britain did not formally adhere to the International Commission till 1895, when Mr. Asquith, then Home Secretary, nominated the present writer as British Representative to the Paris Congress of that year. Since that date, the Quinquennial Congresses had been held at Brussels, Buda-Pesth, and Washington in 1900, 1905, and 1910, at all of which the British Government was represented, the reports of the proceedings being duly submitted to Parliament.

The preliminary arrangements for the Congress in London in 1915 had been carefully prepared by meetings of the Commission representing the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Norway, Russia, Servia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. It was intended also to invite our Dominions-over-Sea—India, and Egypt, to send special representatives. These meetings were held in Paris in 1912, and in London in 1914, the British Committee consisting of the Chairmen of the Prison Boards for Scotland and Ireland (Lord Polwarth, and Mr. Max Green), Sir Basil Thomson, K.C.B., and Mr. A.J. Wall, O.B.E., the late and present Secretaries of the English Board, and myself, as President of the International Commission.

But man only proposes, and the Great War intervened to prevent the realization of those plans. It has, also, of course, for the time being, arrested the development, and thwarted the purpose, of what promised to be a great international movement for the discussion and improvement of all methods affecting the punishment and treatment of crime.

It was for the purpose of the Congress of 1915 that I prepared this short manual, in order that the history and leading features of the English Prison System might be understood by our foreign visitors, and especially its more notable developments of recent years, since England joined the Congress in 1895.[1]

I had been greatly impressed with the singular ignorance that existed, both on the Continent and in the United States, of the character of British penal methods.

In my Report on the Brussels Congress, 1900, I wrote as follows:—

"It is often asked, "What is the value of these Congresses?" It must not be supposed that an Englishman, going to hear discussions on penal subjects in a foreign country, where the laws, habits, and character of the people are entirely different, is going to bring back new ideas of Prison administration, which he will be able at once to apply, with advantage, in his own country; nor must it be supposed that he is going to carry with him instructions and opinions on these matters which other nations will readily adopt. With a pardonable pride in his national institutions, he is disposed to think that his Prison system is the best in the world; but when he goes abroad he must not be surprised to hear the same claim raised by other countries. He will find that where the English system is not known or is misunderstood, it is but little appreciated. There is a general idea that our punitive methods are harsh, if not barbarous. Legends circulate as to the terrors of the "fouet," the ingenious torture of "la roue," and the grinding tyranny of "travaux forcés." It is not surprising that even an intelligent foreigner fails to grasp the distinction between a sentence of "hard labour" and one of "penal servitude:" so misleading are our terms. At the recent Congress, the Head of the Russian Prisons asked me what is the minimum time for which a sentence of "hard labour" could be imposed, thinking that it was something in its duration and severity comparable to the "katorga" of his own country. When I explained that it might be inflicted for one day only, he turned to his Secretary with a smile, saying, "How little do we understand the English system!" There is a minority, and I hope an increasing one, who understand and appreciate the efforts that have been made of late years to improve the conditions of the treatment of crime in this country."

The comparatively few foreigners who had a personal acquaintance with our Institutions did not conceal their admiration for the order, method, discipline, and exactness which characterize our methods of dealing with crime; but, generally speaking, these legendary ideas prevailed.

The shadow of transportation, of the dark days of penal servitude, and of grievous floggings, hindered a true conception of English methods.

I looked forward to the London Congress as the occasion to dispel these illusions.

A short historical retrospect will show that it is only in comparatively modern times that 'Imprisonment' became the recognized method for the punishment of crime, and that prison reform, in the sense of moral improvement by imprisonment was formulated as a political duty, and became an earnest pre-occupation of statesmen and philosophers. Prisons, as places of punishment, were unknown to ancient Roman law. The 'carcer' was known only as a place for 'holding' prisoners, not for 'punishing' (ad continendos, non ad puniendos homines), and the object of punishment was frankly held by Roman legists to be only that of deterrence by fear. The 'carcer' is not mentioned in the list of Roman penalties: death by hanging, by being hurled from the Tarpeian rock, drowning in a sack; with exile, beating with rods, &c., were the methods with which as schoolboys we were familiar.

In that dark period of penal law, based, as it was, on the ideas of vengeance and intimidation alone, which lasted down to the French Revolution, we find little, or no, reference to Imprisonment as the punishment for crime. In the long list of punishments under the old French Code we find 'réclusion perpetuelle' as a punishment for women and a substitute for the galleys and banishment. There is too 'la prison perpetuelle,' but this was not an organized system, but really a euphemism for that mysterious disappearance of persons obnoxious to the Crown or the State by 'lettres de cachet,' or otherwise.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 marks the beginning of the reaction against these ideas, and the substitution of an orderly and methodical system of punishment. We find 'Imprisonment' formally installed for the execution of offences against the law in the French Code of 1791. At this time Mirabeau is said to have anticipated modern penitentiary science by publishing a remarkable report, declaring Prisons to be 'maisons d'amélioration,' founded on the principle of labour, separation, rewards under a 'mark' system, conditional licence, and aid-on-discharge. We seem to be reading a modern treatise on Prisons—a sudden gleam of light, bursting on an age darkened by the shadow of much unutterable cruelty in the punishment of crime.

But there were certain influences that had been silently operating for some time before this, and leading men's minds to a juster and truer conception of the purpose of punishment. Those influences were both ecclesiastical and secular. The influence of the Church in the middle ages has profoundly affected the modern idea of punishment. 'Le système pénitentiaire' is the direct heir of the 'pénitences' of the Church. In days when no distinction had yet been created between crime and sin, these were the expiation of both. The public 'pénitence' effected both repentance and example, as a warning to others. The private 'pénitence' worked by 'solitude,' to the moral value of which the early Church attached very great value—"Quoties inter homines fui, minus homo redii" was the guiding maxim which separated the monk from his fellow-man. 'Solitary confinement,' as we understand the phrase, dates from the old 'Detrusio in Monasterium' of Canonical law.

But while religious custom had rendered familiar the idea of deprivation of liberty as a means of effecting both repentance and expiation, the influence of the French philosophers and encyclopædists of the eighteenth century had destroyed the claims of the State to deprive a person of liberty by arbitrary process for indefinite periods, or for any period beyond that warranted by the strict necessity of the case. The famous treatise of Beccaria in the middle of the same century further determined the reaction against all arbitrary, unjust, and cruel penalties. He was the first of the utilitarians; every punishment which did not arise from actual necessity of social defence, was, to him and his school, tyrannical and superfluous. Its object was not to torment or afflict a sensitive human being beyond the strict limit of social utility. His propositions have become commonplaces now; but they were new in the age when they were written, and probably no work has exercised a greater influence in the domain of penal law.

It is true that, irrespective of the influence of the Church, and of the writings of philosophers, isolated experiments in the way of prison reform had been made in different parts of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some of these anticipated in a remarkable way the principles in vogue to-day.

The Protestants of Amsterdam in 1593 built a prison for women, which had for its object their moral reform by work and religious influences. There are records of similar establishments in Germany and Hanseatic towns. In 1703, Clement XI. built the famous Prison, St. Michel, for young prisoners, and, later in the century, Villain XIV. built the celebrated cellular prison at Gand, which excited the admiration of our own Howard.

It was the immortal Howard who first stirred public opinion in England to consider the question of prison reform. As Burke finely said of him "He surveyed all Europe, not to view the sumptuousness of palaces, but to survey the mansions of sorrow and of pain: to collect the distresses of men in all countries. The plan was original, and full of genius as of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery."

The names of Howard and Bentham will always stand in the forefront of those who in those dark days tried to enlist public sympathy for the prisoner and captive,—the former by his keen humanity, protesting against the abuses and barbarisms which he found to exist at home and abroad: the latter, as utilitarian and economist, devising a new system to secure, firstly, a rational system of legal punishment for the offence committed, and, secondly, a rational system of treatment while in prison after commitment.

To the casual student of English Prison history, Bentham is known chiefly as the author of the somewhat whimsical scheme known as the 'Panopticon'—a structural device for securing, in the first place, the safe custody of prisoners and economy of administration. Because he said boldly that he rejected sentiment in his construction of a Prison System, his influence has been sometimes regarded as hostile to the reformatory idea which was beginning to gain ground in Europe; but in rejecting sentiment, he, at the same time, admitted that, controlled by reason, it was a useful monitor, and, indeed, it is the great merit of Bentham that, in an age when there was grave need of adjustment of the essential factors of punishment, he worked for a compromise between a too great pre-occupation with its moral purpose, and a too severe insistence on its penal and terrifying effect. Though in vigorous language he preached the gospel of 'grinding rogues honest,' it was part of his plan to educate, to classify, to make methodical provision for discharge, and, lastly, he may be said to be the founder of the modern school of criminology in laying stress on the absolute necessity of preventing crime by discovering and combating its causes.

But Bentham was in advance of his age in these matters, though his writings exercised a considerable influence in France, where jurists were busy preparing the Penal Code of the First Empire. History, by the pen of Professor Lecky, has severely condemned the statesmen of that period for their callous indifference to all questions relating to the treatment of crime and of prisoners. He says: "England, which stood so high among the nations of the world in political, industrial, and intellectual eminence, ranked in this matter shamefully below the average of the Continent." There was, in fact, no penal system, strictly so-called. It was simply a policy of 'débarras,' under which all offenders against the law were shipped to the Colonies; young and old, grave and petty offenders were all banished under a rough and ready scheme of Transportation, (as explained in my Chapter on the history of Penal Servitude). So long as this System lasted—from 1787 to 1845—the modern problems, which are involved in keeping our prisoners at home, did not occupy the public mind. This apathy and callousness was not due entirely to the sense of security which Transportation gave by the practical elimination from the body politic of persons presumed dangerous to the State: it was due also to the want of imagination, which is the parent of cruelty. For this, the absence of any system of National Education must be held responsible. It was not until imagination was quickened by the great religious revivals, by the gradually increasing power of the Press—(the champion of all forms of unnoticed suffering) and by the spread of education among the masses, that Philanthropy, in its modern garb, the Inquisitor of prisons and of the dark places of the world, came down to the earth, and demanded that all those cruelties which were associated with English penal law should cease, and that it should no longer be possible to say with Sir S. Romilly (1817) that "the laws of England were written in blood." Excidat illa dies ævo nec cetera credant secula.

But dawn was breaking, and the impulse that was to compel attention to 'la question pénitentiaire' came from the other side of the Atlantic.

I have shown, in tracing the history of imprisonment for short sentences (Local Prisons) in this country, how paramount was the influence of America in the first half of the last century. The echo of the controversy between those who upheld the Auburn and the Philadelphian Systems—the Cellular and Associated plans—respectively, still lingers. In America, the movement which determined the reform of Prisons was essentially religious. It was the old idea of 'Pénitence' borrowed from the Canonical Law, which there, as in Europe, dominated the minds of men who regarded a sentence of the law as the instrument for bringing back the mind of the offender, by solitude and meditation, to remorse for the sinful act, and amendment for the future. The prison cell, as with the monks of old, was the method of redemption—"cella continuata dulcessit." If by its positive effect the cell worked redemption of the soul, its negative result was claimed to be equally efficacious in preventing contamination by means of segregation. Pressed severely to its logical conclusion, cellular seclusion became a refinement of cruelty, while, on the other hand, promiscuity, resulting from unregulated association, was admitted in this, as in other countries, to be the nursery of crime. From that day, the course of Prison Reform has been in the direction of finding a compromise between these two opposite principles; an effort to reconcile the deterrent effect of punishment with the object of so improving the mind and body of a prisoner that he shall leave Prison a better and not a worse man. Because it is a more inspiring and a nobler task to reform a man by punishment, than to use punishment merely as the means of retribution by exacting from him the expiation of his offence by a dull, soulless, and a monotonous servitude, public sentiment, in all its zeal for the rehabilitation of the offender, is apt to overlook the primary and fundamental purpose of punishment, which, say what we will, must remain in its essence retributory and deterrent.

It is a curious and interesting fact that a dispute between two neighbouring States in America as to the best plan to follow in dealing with offenders—whether it was better to keep them in their cells day and night, or during the night only, should have determined for England, France, and other parts of Europe the method of imprisonment to be adopted, viz:—the Cellular System. The System found favour in Europe, as in America, for its moral or religious value; in other words, the reform of the prisoner from this date takes its place deliberately as one of the essential factors of punishment, side by side with retribution and deterrence. As I have said, it was essentially a religious movement, but to the success of the propaganda, which elevated the cellular system almost to a fetish, there were contributing causes of a more practical nature,-the admitted evils of unregulated association, the urgent need of a new method of construction, the greater security of prisoners, and the economy of administration, resulting from the employment of a smaller staff for supervision. These latter considerations soon became the principal pre-occupation of those engaged in prison administration. For many years following the triumph of the cellular system, the originally dominating idea of moral reform, as the principal purpose of punishment, seemed to be lost sight of in a hurried rush, both in England and on the Continent, to build new prisons on the cellular plan, to improve their sanitary conditions, to regulate dietary, to organize labour, and generally to concentrate on the economic, rather than on the moral, improvement of those suffering imprisonment.

The writings of De Tocqueville and Beaumont, the delegates sent out by France to study the cellular plan in America, had a wide influence in restraining that excessive zeal for aiming at the moral or religious reform of prisoners, which had inspired the Quakers of Pennsylvania in their crusade against the abuses of the old system. The words of De Tocqueville are worth quoting, as they called back the minds of men at a time when such a warning was greatly needed, to a just and wise appreciation of the function and purpose of punishment, and corrected a tendency which is always asserting itself, to exaggerate the necessity for moral and spiritual reform, at the expense of the other essential attributes of punishment. He says, "I say it boldly: if the penitentiary system has no other purpose than reform, the lawgiver must abandon the system, not because it is not admirable, but because it is too rarely attained. The moral reform of the individual is a great thing for the religious man, but not for the statesman: a political institution does not exist for the individual, but for the mass. Moral reform is then only an accident of the system. Its value is in the habit of order, work, separation, education, obedience to inflexible rule. These have a profound moral value. If a man is not made honest, he contracts honest habits: he was a useless person, he now knows how to work: if he is not more virtuous, he is at least more reasonable: he has the morality of self-interest, if not of honour."

MM. De Tocqueville and Beaumont had been commissioned by the French Government in 1831 to visit the United States, and to report on the comparative advantages of the Auburn and Pennsylvania systems. They were followed in 1837 by M. Demetz, the famous founder of the Colony of Mettray. It was due to the influence of these men, aided by the writings of MM. Lucas and Bérenger in France, and of Ducpetiaux in Belgium, that a remarkable impulse was given in Western Europe to the adoption of the cellular system. Two International Congresses were held at Frankfort in 1846, which declared in favour of the separate system. It was to this period of keen interest in the question of prison reform that in England we owe the model prison at Pentonville, 1842, the Prison of Louvain in Belgium, and a large number of cellular prisons built in France, Switzerland, Prussia, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. We have here the beginning of the later International movement, which afterwards found expression in the International Prison Commission-a formal body of experts nominated by most of the leading States of the World, whose periodical meetings in different centres since the London Congress of 1872 are recognized as a great civilizing influence in all that relates to the treatment of prisoners, the construction of Prisons, and the revision of penal law.

It may be stated broadly that to France and America must be given the credit for the impulse and energy which lit and kept alive the torch of prison reform during those years of the last century, say 1830-70, when, by reason of dynastic changes on the Continent, and political struggles at home, the flame might have been obscured, or even extinguished. Although, in many countries, as in our own, eminent men and women, whose names will always live, had even from the middle of the eighteenth century, inspired by a lofty humanity, raised their voices in protest against the callous indifference which tolerated much cruelty and barbarity in the system of punishments, yet, the main impulse came, on the one hand, from the religious zeal of the Pennsylvanian Quakers who tried to utilize deprivation of liberty, by means of imprisonment, as an instrument for effecting the spiritual regeneration of the offender; on the other, from the political zeal for the rights of man—even the reversionary rights of the prisoner,—which dominated French thought, under the influence of the encyclopædists. These currents, reacting on each other, determined the course of public opinion in the direction of regarding a good, just, and humane prison system as the index of a progressive civilization. It was the combination of these two influences in concrete, which, just fifty years ago, inaugurated what may be called the 'modern system.' The famous Commission of enquiry into the state of Prisons, appointed by the National Assembly in France in 1871, and with which the names of d'Haussonville, Bérenger, and Félix Voisin will always be honourably connected, was followed immediately by the mission to Europe of Dr. Wines, the Secretary of the Prison Association of New York. To his energies we owe the London Congress of 1872, the parent of the International Prison Commission, established on a secure and lasting basis a few years later. In 1877, was founded in Paris the Société Générale des Prisons—the French Academy of penal science—a body of men distinguished in law, medicine, science, and philanthropy, who have consistently since that day, through their Journal, 'La Révue Pénitentiaire'—a monthly publication,—informed and educated public opinion throughout the civilized world on all questions relating to the treatment, and, notably, the prevention of crime.

The first International Congresses—known generally as 'Prison' Congresses, were concerned more with 'Prison' than with penal law, with visits to penal establishments, and with comparisons of Prison systems. The régime pénitentiaire was the principal pre-occupation, but the subjects of discussion soon outgrew the original limits. The sphere of inquiry gradually broadened. The prison régime is only the expression of the penal law, which itself again is only the expression of the public sentiment or opinion, which is the final arbiter in deciding the methods to be followed in maintaining the rights of the community against those who threaten its peace and security. Succeeding Congresses, therefore, as was to be anticipated, composed, as they were, not only of Prison officials and experts in prison management, but of persons from all countries, distinguished in law, medicine, and science, claimed for themselves a larger field and a more ambitious title. La 'Science' pénitentiaire is declared to be the new scope and title of the work. It is an all-embracing phrase, and, from the necessities of the case, of ambiguous meaning. It includes both practical knowledge of administration, and the knowledge by which Science, in its strict sense, can inform and instruct in dealing with the problem of crime, and of criminal man. To these must be added Social Science, and all implied by that wide term. The reaction that became manifest at the close of the last century was against what is called the "classical" conception of crime and punishment. Professor G. Vidal, the eminent author of 'Droit Criminel et la science pénitentiaire' has shown how rigid and mechanical, under the influence of the French penal code, the administration of criminal justice had become. The accused was simply a 'type abstrait' a "mannequin vivant sur lequel le juge colle un numéro du code pénal." A reaction against this abstract conception of crime came in the early 'eighties from a school of Criminologists known as the Italian School, of which the chief was Lombroso. Theories of the criminel-né—i.e., a human being fore-doomed to crime by atavistic propensity, and distinguishable physical stigmata, or 'tares physiologiques'—created considerable sensation at the time, and it cannot be denied that, though refuted by later enquiry, they exercised a profound influence in Europe, and gave a direct impulse to the scientific study of the causes predisposing to criminal acts. This study has since become the principal pre-occupation in all countries of those interested in what, by a misnomer, is spoken of generally as Prison Reform. The phrase remains, but it refers no longer to questions concerning the construction and management of prisons, the comparative merits of the cellular or associated plan, forms and methods of prison industries, staff and discipline. The Prison Reformer of to-day has adopted from Continental writers a phrase, which is at once the motto and the principle of his faith. 'L'individualization de la peine' sums up concisely the new tendency. This phrase aptly expresses the efforts now being made throughout the civilized world to grapple with the problem: not by dealing with prisoners as 'abstract types,' or in the mass, by imposing hard and fast regulations to be adopted for one and all irrespective of individuality, but to deal with each case on its merits: to note its peculiarities, and above all things, by 'preventive' measures to avert an otherwise certain gravitation towards crime.

In the working out of this problem, the International Commission is a sort of 'League of Nations,' ever striving by the invention of new Preventive measures, not so much to improve the habitation, custody, and treatment of offenders who are committed to prison, but to prevent them from arriving at that stage where commitment to prison becomes necessary, for long or short periods, in the interests of the security and protection of the community.

The aid of science is more and more invoked, and it is with reason and good purpose that the International movement professes to be a movement for the discovery and propagation of 'la science pénitentiaire.' Of all the sciences invoked in the cause of prison reform, medical science is assuming more and more a preponderating rôle in the domain of criminal justice. The mysterious laws of 'psychiatry'—a word of common use and application in all discussions in the problem of crime,—now engage, especially in the United States, a keen and close attention. The 'psychical laboratory' is, in many States, a necessary appanage of a penal institution. In theory, the knowledge of the mental state of a person committing an offence is a condition precedent to a correct assessment of guilt. Such investigation includes not only the diagnosis by scientific test of mental state, but of all those pathological conditions resulting, perhaps, from physical or external causes, hereditary or otherwise, which may be held to attenuate responsibility for any given act. The psychical laboratory as a system in aid of justice assumes, of course, a normal or reasonable being, and to such a being alone can full responsibility be attached. It is obvious to what extravagance such a system can be pushed, but the underlying principle is sound, and a perfect prison system, based on science, would adapt its treatment to a far greater degree than at present to the varying categories of offenders, who, under the old classical system, which recognized only the uniform and abstract type of crime and criminal, would be consigned equally to the one abstract and uniform type of penalty—the prison cell.

But it is not only medical science which claims this preponderating rôle. If the Lombrosian School erred in asserting the predominant influence of what was called the 'physio-psychical' conditions of crime: if the right to punish man be based not on the character of the crime, but on the constitution of the criminal, the doctor would usurp the function of the judge, and the bankruptcy of the old penal system would be complete. It was in protest against this extravagant assertion of the claims of medical and mental science (medico-légale expertise) that a succession of Congresses was held on the Continent in the latter part of the last century (Congrès International d'anthropologie et sociologie), at the last of which—the Congress of Geneva, 1896—the English Government was represented. The general result of the discussions that took place was to reject the Lombrosian idea of the physical or constitutional causes of crime, and to assert the importance of 'milieu' (nurture and environment) as the predisposing factor in anti-social conduct,—in the words of Dr. Lacassagne, Professor of Legal Medicine at Lyon—words which sum up tersely the familiar view that crime is entirely the result of social conditions, 'le milieu social est le bouillon de culture de la criminalité, le microbe c'est le criminel.'

The relative part played by inherited propensity and social environment remains to-day the leading subject of controversy with those interested in the philosophical aspect of crime. England has contributed its share to this controversy in the remarkable work of Dr. Goring "The Study of the English Convict," of which I have given a brief account in the Chapter "A Criminological Inquiry in English Prisons." His early death has robbed penal science of a brilliant and earnest votary; but his work will always remain as the first attempt to analyze the causes of crime by strictly scientific method. An abridged edition of his work has lately been published, with an Introduction by Professor Karl Pearson, under whose auspices and guidance it was compiled at the Biometric Laboratory of the London University. An Introduction by Professor Pearson not only marks the great scientific value of this attempt to probe the causes of crime, but gives a just and merited appreciation of a singular effort by a very remarkable man to test the observations and experience that came to him as a Medical Officer of Prisons by the latest methods of scientific investigation.

On the Continent of Europe there has been proceeding since 1869 an attempt to reconcile the extreme views of the Italian School as to the predestination by atavistic or innate disposition to criminal acts with the theory that the causes of crime are to be sought exclusively in social condition. In that year, was founded l'Union Internationale de droit pénal, of which the most distinguished founders were three Professors of Law—Van Hamel, Prins, and Von Liszt, Professors of Law at the Universities of Antwerp, Belgium, and Berlin, respectively. Since that date, Congresses have been held at Brussels, Berne, Christiania, Lisbon and Buda-Pesth. The object of this School, while admitting the value of experimentation by anthropological and sociological study and research, was to encourage preventive work, so that the occasion of crime might be anticipated, be it that of social circumstance which induced the predisposition to the anti-social act (the occasional criminal), or the psycho-physiological state which, unless discovered and checked in the beginning by appropriate preventive handling, medicinal or institutional, is likely to become the parent of conduct dangerous to the community (the habitual criminal). The two factors, external and internal, often co-exist, and the difficulty of the problem must be intensified by their co-existence. It is, therefore, only by the 'individualization of punishment' i.e., by a careful, and exact, and scientific system of preventive diagnosis that a true and correct assessment of criminal responsibility can be attained. This is the modern system—the point to which the long road of penal device, theory, and invention leads. The problem is scientific and social. To deal with it effectively we require not only what science can disclose in the sphere of mental diagnosis, and therapeutics (psychiatry), but what the improvement of social condition can effect in raising the standard of life.

It may not occur to those who observe casually, and perhaps carelessly, the phenomenon of crime to what an extent it depends on, and can be explained by, strictly social conditions. What is summarized by criminologists under the title of 'l'hygiène préventive' comprises all those social and political reforms which make up the 'Social Programme,' which is engaging the attention of our statesmen to-day. Better housing and lighting, the control of the Liquor Traffic, cheap food, fair wages, insurance, even village Clubs, and Boy Scouts, in fact, all the special and political problems in vogue to-day—all react directly on the state of crime. The great War—terrible and hard school of experience though it has been—has given us the great object lesson of what new conditions of life, resulting notably from the control of the Liquor Trade and facility of employment, can effect. A century of legislation directed to the changes of the penal code, or the methods of punishment, would not effect what social legislation, induced by the War, and affecting the daily habit and living of the people, has revealed during the last five years,—the numbers coming to prison reduced 75 per cent! 71 per 100,000 committed to prison in 1918, as against 369 in 1913: the committals for Drunkenness reduced from 70,000 to 2,000: the almost complete disappearance of Vagrancy—a reduction from 24,000 to 1,200—the "plaie sociale"—the despair and the problem of the prison and social reformer.

By recapitulating shortly in this Preface the history of punishment in its successive phases since the question of Prison Reform first began to occupy the minds of statesmen and philanthropists in the middle of the eighteenth century, I have endeavoured to make it clear to those who, in the future, will be responsible for the law and practice of Prisons, the direction in which progress lies. Given firm, thoughtful, humane administration in all that concerns the actual custody of all offenders of both sexes of the various categories, given a wise classification and treatment according to age, sex, and nature of the offence—the future lies in Preventive Science; on the one hand, medical science, strictly so-called, which shall, by diagnosis and therapeutics of the mental and physical state, in early age before it is too late, correct and restrain by suitable preventive means, institutional or otherwise, the tendency to anti-social conduct; and on the other, social or political science, which, by raising the standard of life among the masses, will re-constitute the 'milieu' whence vice and misery spring. Let not the reproach again be made by an English historian that "England falls shamefully below the level of foreign countries" in this great matter. If foreign countries rightly admire the method, discipline, firmness, and impartiality of our penal system, let them also recognize that we are not behindhand in what Preventive Science has to teach in the domain of medicine, law, and social hygiene. While firmly maintaining the system of human rights unimpaired, and while not failing in the protection of the State from any attack made on that system by persons, individually or collectively, let us exhaust every means for saving the potential offender from succumbing inevitably, in the absence of prophylactic methods, to the temptations to commit anti-social acts, which from causes mental, physical, or social he is unable to resist. This is the meaning of the 'individualization of punishment'—it is quite consistent with a firm administration of penal justice, but it destroys for ever the old classical idea of the 'abstract type of criminal.' In other words, justice demands that the old formula of 'Imprisonment with or without hard labour' indiscriminately applied, shall no longer be held to satisfy all her claims.

The reaction against this so-called 'dosimétrie pénale' i.e., the abstract conception of crime and the mechanical application of punishment 'according to code' is a growing force. It is marked in the United States of America by the universal adoption of the 'Indeterminate sentence,' and on the Continent of Europe by various degrees for conditional conviction and liberation which find their place in the latest penal codes. In England and America, Probation: in France and Belgium, the 'sursis à l'exécution de la peine'—all mark the reluctance to resort to fixed penalties when Justice can be satisfied by other means. England, I believe, stands alone in its adoption of the system of Preventive Detention—one of the most notable reforms of recent years for dealing with the Habitual Criminal. The success of the system, so far as it has gone, goes far to justify belief in the virtue of Indetermination of sentence. Public opinion may not be ripe for this yet, as applied to ordinary crime, but the principle which the system of Preventive Detention illustrates, viz:—the careful observation of the history, character, and prospects on discharge by an Advisory Committee on the spot, with a view to the grant of conditional freedom, furnishes in a different sphere an interesting example of the value of 'individualization.' The strict condition of release is that a man places himself under the care and supervision not of the Police, but of a State Association, organized and subsidized by the Government, but entirely controlled by a body of unofficial workers, who keep him under strict but kindly supervision, provide him with employment and lodgings, but unfailingly report him to the Authorities if he fails to observe any one of the conditions on which freedom has been granted. The singular success of this system applied to the worst and most inveterate criminals, each of whom has been found by a Jury to belong to the habitual criminal class, has naturally induced the opinion which is gaining ground, that similar methods might, with advantage, be used in dealing with the ordinary penal servitude population, and be substituted for the old ticket-of-leave system, under which remission of sentence can be earned by a more or less mechanical observance of prison rules, on the condition that the unexpired portion of the sentence is passed under Police Supervision. It is possible that comparison of the two systems may engage public attention in the future, when interest in prison reform, obscured and diminished by the greater problems which the war has created, again asserts itself.

I have shown in the Chapter on Discharged Prisoners the indispensability of a good system of 'Patronage' or aid-on-discharge. Much has been done in this respect in recent years. The action of the Government in 1911 in recognizing the supreme importance of regulating the discharge of persons from penal servitude by the establishment of a State Association for this purpose, was a great step forward. To the Central Association for the aid of discharged convicts, then created, may be attributed a large and an honourable share in that remarkable decrease of recidivism which prison statistics illustrate, and to which reference is made in my Chapter on "Patronage, or Aid-on-discharge." It is also a remarkable example of the value of a co-operation by which the resources of the State, and the enthusiasm and freedom of action possessed by a voluntary association, can contribute to the diminution of crime.

The retrospective study of crime in this country since the London Congress, 1872 (Chapter XVII.), must suggest many reflections, both concerning its treatment in the past, and its prospect for the future. If we eliminate the period of War, 1914-18, the special conditions of which I have already referred to, the broad deduction may be made that so long as the classical conception of punishment remained, i.e., the mechanical application of the letter of the law to an abstract type of offender, no great impression was being made either in the number or character of offences. Statistics varied from year to year under the influence of special circumstances; but the great stage army of offenders in all the categories continued its unbroken array, with a monotonous regularity, and it seemed almost a mockery to talk of social progress, when, in the background was the silent, ceaseless tramp of this multitude of men, women, and children, finding no rest but behind prison walls, and only issuing thence to re-enter again.

In Chapter VII. (The Inquiry of 1894), I have shown how the public conscience awoke at the end of the last century. It declared in a voice that could be heard that a determined effort must be made to grapple with this problem, and in two ways in particular, (a) It asserted the new policy of Prevention, not Prevention in the sense of the old penal servitude Acts, by which a criminal was prevented after a series of offences by strict supervision of Police from repeating his crimes, but Prevention which would strike at the sources of crime, by cutting off the supply by concentration of effort on the young offender; and (b) by the organization of such a system of Patronage, or Aid-on-discharge, that no prisoner could say with truth that he had fallen again from want of a helping hand. Prevention, in this sense, has been the watch-word of the Prison System since that time, and its effect is distinctly traceable in the statistics of crime since the beginning of the century.

Enough has been said to show that the future of crime is with the statesmen and men of science. The prison administrator plays only a small and obscure executive part—but from his experience and observation of the causes that make for crime, he may be able to denote the direction in which its gradual solution may be found. A quarter of a century spent by the Author in directing the prison administration of this country is his excuse for offering his humble contribution to this absorbing and all-important theme—

"Enough if something from our hands gives power To live, and act, and serve the future hour."

E.R.B.

December, 1920.

FOOTNOTES:

THE ENGLISH PRISON SYSTEM.

CHAPTER I.

THE MEANING OF "PRISON REFORM."

"Prison Reform" is a phrase of many meanings. It is used indifferently by the publicist who is seeking a correct definition of the function of punishment: by the utilitarian who doubts if the official system of administration is fulfilling its State purpose: by the humanitarian whose pity is stirred by the inevitable austerity of a system, inflexibly applied to all who suffer deprivation of liberty, and whose mechanical operation might, in their opinion, be relaxed relatively to the vastly different mental and physical states of all the categories of human beings coming, in one way or another, within the domain of the criminal law.

All agree that the System should be, as far as possible, 'Reformatory,' but many are tempted to overlook that it must be also, if punishment is to have any meaning, coercive, as restraining liberty; deterrent, as an example; and retributory, in the sense of enforcing a penalty for an offence. When Plato said that the object of punishment is to "make an offender good," he did not intentionally underestimate the 'retributory' theory of punishment. He only meant that, in the language of modern philosophy, we must respect the reversionary rights of humanity, and while inflicting punishment for an anti-social act, must not lose sight of the duty of restoring, if possible, the offender to society as a better man or woman. As stated by the Committee of 1894, we must not regard him or her as "a hopeless and worthless element of the community." It must be admitted that chastisement by pain (i.e. temporary deprivation of liberty and all that that implies) appeals only to the lower nature, but it is effective in suggesting the consciousness of what the system of human rights means—the system which is maintained by a strong collective determination that it shall not be violated with impunity. This is commonly called 'retribution,' but it has nothing to do with vindictiveness or private vengeance. Society without such a collective determination to resent and punish anti-social acts would be a welter of anarchy and disorder. Let us not then be tempted in the goodness of our hearts, and in the strength of our human pity and sympathy, to overlook the necessary foundation of punishment, which is the assertion of the system of rights by pain or penalty—not pain in its physical sense, but pain that comes from degradation and the loss of self-respect.

There is some confusion in the everyday use of the phrases 'Prison Reform' and 'Penal Reform'. Formerly, 'Prison Reform' meant the structural reform of prisons, sanitation, order, cleanliness. To-day, it means the reform of the "prisoner" by improved methods of influence and treatment while in prison. 'Penal Reform' means strictly the reform of penal law, or of the system of punishment—a question of State policy, with which Parliament and the Judiciary are primarily concerned. These are, of course, greatly influenced by public sentiment and opinion. It is a difficult, complex, and subtle problem, for the solution of which we require legal knowledge, administrative experience, and a nice judgment of the temper of the community, and of the balance which should be kept between the just, and even stern, maintenance of the system of public rights and the rights of the individual human being, which must always be respected, even under chastisement. 'Prison Reform' is not a theory of punishment: it is an incident of it: it is a question how far we can assert the rights of the State without unnecessary, or excessive, or unprofitable moral and physical damage to the individual.

Of physical damage we need not speak, for it must, I think, be conceded that the medical care of prisoners in this country is as exact, and patient, and considerate, as can be secured by an able, humane, and untiring medical staff.

With moral damage it is different. The most sanguine would hardly expect that, even with the most approved methods, the 'flétrissure' of punishment can be entirely avoided: the blow to pride and self-respect, and of the respect of one's fellow creatures, must constitute a damage which, if not irreparable, must be heavy and even lasting. A humane administration will try and mitigate this inevitable incident of all punishment. Its first and primary function must be, of course, to secure obedience, discipline, order, and the habit of industry. These things alone have a great moral value. Many cruelties have been enacted in the past in the name of prison discipline—solitude, darkness, chains, floggings, tread wheels and cranks, even until a comparatively recent period, were regarded as the essential accessories of punishment. In studying the history of punishment, we cannot fail to be struck by the singular inventiveness of the human mind in designing forms of suffering for those who broke the law—crucifixion, mutilation, stoning, drowning, torture. It was not until the folly of unprofitable and cruel punishment had been illustrated, as in this country, by its failure to correct, or prevent, or until the certainty of punishment was recognized as the real deterrent for crime, that the penal system was rationalized, and by a slow process, due to a progressive widening of the circle of humanity, to what M. Tarde describes as "la propagation ambiante des exemples," the civilized races of the world laid down the sharp and cruel instruments by which alone it had been believed that society could be avenged, and justice secured. It came slowly to be recognized, not only as a religious, but as a political truth, that the worst criminal possessed 'reversionary rights of humanity,' and that it was only by respecting these that there existed the chance, and the hope, that a man might be reformed by punishment, and not thrown back again into the world with only one burning desire to avenge himself for the cruelties which society had indicted upon him. This is the meaning of the Platonic maxim that the purpose of punishment is "to make men good."

How do we try and 'make prisoners good in English Prisons'? Admitting the necessity for strict regulation to secure order, discipline, and obedience, what are the Reformatory influences in English Prisons? Let us first consider the nature and character of the population to whom these influences are to be applied. True, that they are all human beings, with 'reversionary rights of humanity'; but what an infinite variety of mental and physical states: what an infinite degree of will-power, of self-conciousness, and of self-control, of capacity to realize and to understand. Let us regard them as a College or University of persons of all ages, sexes, and dispositions, and let us not forget that this 'corpus' on which our reforming influences are to be brought to bear is, for the time being, not subject to all the impulses, stimuli, hopes, rewards and temptations to which persons in free life are subject. It was well and truly said by the Home Secretary (Mr. Churchill) in the House of Commons, in 1910, "the mood and temper of the public with regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country. A calm, dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused, and even of the convicted, criminal against the State—a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment—a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry those who have paid their due in the hard coinage of punishment: tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerative processes: unfailing faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man. These are the symbols, which, in the treatment of crime and criminal, mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are sign and proof of the living virtue in it." There could not be better words than these to inscribe as a phylactery on the brow of every prison administration throughout the world. They are, indeed, the test of civilization. Do our works in this country correspond to this profession of faith?

Of what does this 'corpus' consist? In the year before the war there were, in round figures, 90,000 males and 32,000 females sent to prison for periods of less than 6 months: about 7,000 of both sexes sent for long periods over 6 months: about 1,000 sent to penal servitude: and about 6,000 Juvenile-Adults came within the jurisdiction of the Prison authority, either in Borstal Institutions or ordinary prisons. Of these, the percentage of recidivism in Convict Prisons was no less than 87% for males and 70% for females. Of those sentenced to imprisonment, 63% of the males, and 79% of the females had been previously convicted, while no less than 17% of the males and 31% of the females had incurred eleven or more previous convictions. Amongst the young male prisoners, 16-21, sentenced to imprisonment, about 60% had incurred no previous conviction. The system of classification to which all these are subject in prison, is described in Chapter VII.

All are subject alike under general prison rules to the reforming influences of religion. The Chaplain, Priest, or Minister walks noiselessly among them all, gleaning wheat among the tares, and calling back those who will come to the bidding of the divine Imperatives, which if they have been imparted in youth, have, in many cases, almost faded from memory; and who can tell how often in the silent communings of the cell, the spark of life and regeneration may not light again at the voice of the patient, pleading Minister of God. It is not only by the call of the Chapel services, with the hymns and simple prayers, but by the regular visitation of each in their cells, that this spark latent, but not quite extinguished, may rekindle. Do not let us undervalue the quiet, patient, and unwearying task of those who minister spiritually to those in bondage in prison cells. The door is wide open to all creeds and denominations who seek to enter in; and not only to Ministers of religion, but to lay visitors and missionaries who find their prompting to this work by their desire to realize the holy precept "I was in prison and you visited me." Let us not forget the gentle and comforting influence of our Lady Visitors, and the thousands of forlorn and despairing women, young and old, who perhaps find, for the first time, the voice of sympathy and encouragement, which, like a ray of sunshine, lifts the gloom from off their souls.

In addition to the carefully prescribed orders for the education up to a certain Standard of such prisoners as are shown after examination on reception to be in need of it, there are, too, other means by which "the spark of life and sympathy" can be kindled in prison. Of late years, great progress has been made in the systematic introduction of outside influences in the form of lectures and addresses on lay subjects, calculated to interest and inspire, and to afford matter for reflection, and to mitigate the evil of morbid introspection inseparable from long and monotonous seclusion. The value of such influences is manifested in a wonderful degree by the reference made to them in letters from prisoners to their homes and friends. In many cases, a new outlook on life begins. Men and women who have almost lost their humanity by habitual association with the lower conditions of life,—its cupidities, baseness, and greed—whose minds have never risen above the gratification of sensual desires and impulses, have a new vista of things opened to them. Such 'conversion' may arise quite unexpectedly and fortuitously from some simple story, from some appealing incident in world history, even from simple explanation of the wonders of nature or of science. During the war, the practice was instituted of giving a weekly account of the great events occurring on the battlefields of the world: of the heroic deeds that were done: of the noble sacrifices that were made. There was a unanimous agreement as to the moral value of these addresses; and it has recently been decided to continue the system of imparting news of the world to all prisoners by the same method of weekly addresses, Governors and Chaplains having a discretion as to the subjects they shall select, and the manner in which they shall deliver them. It has often been made a reproach against the Prison System that prisoners are cut off from all knowledge of outside events, and are thrust back again into the world like children pushed into a dark room, and obliged to grope and feel their way before they can stabilize themselves in the current of normal life. This is no longer the case.

It is another reproach against the system that prisoners are doomed to an unnatural existence by the so-called 'law of silence.' Since 1898, there has been no 'law of silence,' strictly so-called. Previously to that date, the order ran "The Governor shall enforce the observance of silence throughout the Prison." The Committee of 1894 said on this subject: "We think that the privilege of talking might be given after a certain period as a reward for good conduct on certain days for a limited time, and under reasonable supervision, to all long-sentence prisoners, local as well as convict, who have conducted themselves well, and who are not deemed unsuitable for the privilege. The present practice of imposing silence except for the purposes of labour and during the visits of officials and authorised persons, for a period it may be of 15 or 20 years, seems to us unnatural. We recognize that careful supervision would be necessary if this privilege is allowed, but we do not think that the disadvantages which might, perhaps, from time to time, occur would be at all equal to the good likely to result from a partial and judicious removal of this very unnatural restriction." The existing rule made under the Prison Act, 1898, is as follows:—

"The Governor shall, subject to the provisions of these rules, prevent all intercourse or communication between the prisoners, so far as the conduct of the business of the prison or the labour of the prisoners will permit, and shall take care that all intercourse or communication between them shall be conducted in such manner only as he may direct. But the privilege of talking may be given after a certain period as a reward for good conduct on certain days, for a limited time, and under reasonable supervision, to such long-sentenced prisoners as have conducted themselves well, and who desire the privilege and are not deemed unsuitable for it."

Conformably to this rule, a prisoner who desires this privilege (and many do not desire it) and is not unsuitable for it, may, on Sundays, after a certain period of sentence, walk and converse with another prisoner, provided that such prisoner is of the same class, and that, in the opinion of the Governor, the association is not likely to be injurious. Female prisoners and invalids in hospital are allowed a large latitude in this respect.

The object of the regulations is not to impose a strict 'law of silence,' which is reasonably deemed 'unnatural,' but to prevent harmful and profitless gossip, and inter-communication between prisoners, which is not only dangerous from the point of view of order and discipline, but as furnishing a fertile source of corruption. Those who declaim against the 'law of silence,' in the same breath denounce the prison régime as a 'manufactory of criminals,' or as a 'nursery of crime.' In what way could criminals be better manufactured than by allowing a free intercourse, where evil designs and plottings, both for mischief inside and concerted crime outside the prison, would be fostered and encouraged?

Apart from the organized privilege of talking, allowed to well-conducted prisoners, there are many other ways in which their humanity is respected—the brightening of the daily Chapel service, with arrangements for choirs, singers, and instrumentalists taking part in the services: weekly missions in prisons: the delivery of moral and religious addresses by lay persons or members of religious bodies of any denomination: weekly classes, for which prisoners can be taken from labour, and where they may discuss among themselves selected subjects. These classes, referred to in a later Chapter, may be composed of 'Star' and Second Division prisoners, and even ordinary Third Division prisoners may be chosen to participate.

Lectures, with or without magic lantern, may be arranged on lay or sacred subjects, calculated to elevate and instruct prisoners, and containing an undoubted moral purpose and value.

Another innovation of recent years has been the issue to well-behaved prisoners who have completed six months of their sentences, of note-books and pencils, by which they are enabled in their leisure moments, to make a special study of some particular subject, which is likely either to be of benefit to them on discharge, or where their prospects on discharge might be impaired by the absence of any special means for maintaining the knowledge of any special subject which they previously possessed. Notes also may be taken from books regularly furnished from a well-stocked library, where such literary extracts are deemed to be of value to a prisoner for the improvement of his mental equipment.

By such methods and strivings to find the 'treasure that is in the heart of every man,' I venture to assert that there is, and has been now for many years, what Mr. Churchill described as the "tireless effort towards curative and regenerative processes," and this is the test of the virtue of a prison system, as it is also the test of the degree of humanity in the nation.

Our prison System has, in recent years, been subjected to a very severe test by the fact that, of necessity, penal treatment in prison, primarily designed for the criminal class, has been applied to thousands of individuals in no way belonging to that class, whom it has been necessary to commit to prison under the Defence of the Realm Acts, either as Conscientious Objectors to Military Service, or otherwise, for the safety of the realm. It is not denied that prison rules and regulations press hardly on men and women who, under normal circumstances, would never have become the subject of those punitive and repressive conditions, which are inseparable from the deprivation of liberty by the State. It may be said generally that the restraints of bondage were borne with courage and patience by the great majority of those who, under the special circumstances referred to, came within the jurisdiction of the prison Authority. To persons of refinement and education (as many were), the many restrictions necessary for the safe custody of criminals would naturally seem harsh, unnecessary, and even unnatural. No doubt their experience has given an impulse to the Prison Reformer, who, in his honourable zeal to soften the lot of the unfortunate captive, is apt to overlook the necessity for strict rules and regulations in dealing with a class to whose habits and instincts he himself is a total stranger. I think that, on the whole, it may be claimed for our Prison System that it has stood the test, and emerged from the search-light thrown upon its inner workings, with at least the admission that the humanities are not neglected: that it is doing its best with the very difficult material with which it deals, to save, encourage, and rehabilitate, when that is possible.

But good influence in prisons, and on prisoners, is a very subtle and mysterious thing. I remember being struck by a passage in the life of 'John Smith of Harrow', lately published. It was as follows: "In the conduct of school-life, it is the personal factor that works for inspiration: no perfecting of methods or machinery can ever replace this." This can be applied literally to prison life; and the first and principal duty of those who administer prisons is in the effort to secure this factor of personality in the selection of the superintending staff, not only of the superior staff—Governors, Chaplains, Medical Officers, and Matrons, but of all the subordinate grades, who are in daily touch with prisoners, and who by their conduct and bearing, and example, exercise a profound influence. We are fortunate in this country in possessing such a staff. It is not given to every man and woman to be capable of combining discipline with kindness: to be at the same time firm and gentle, to be inexorable in securing obedience, while, at the same time, adapting tone and method to the infinite mentalities and moralities to be found in Prison. It is not an exaggeration to say that harshness and abuse of authority are as rare in English Prisons as instances and examples of kind and considerate treatment are abundant; and this is the more admirable when we consider the temptations and difficulties of the task. It is in the upright and manly attributes of our Warder class, typical of the English national character, that a great reforming influence is to be found. Discipline with kindness is the watch-word of our Prison Staff, both in the higher and the lower ranks, and I can say confidently, having examined the condition of Prisons in many foreign countries, that in this respect, the 'tone' of English Prisons is unrivalled.

I have been referring so far to general reformatory influence of the Prison régime, so far as it operates generally with regard to adult prisoners, convicted of ordinary crime. There are two special categories of prisoners, where in recent years a notable departure has been made from prison regulations, in the direction of bringing to bear all those special 'stimuli' and encouragements which appeal to any better instincts that may be latent, and may inculcate laws of conduct which shall protect the offender from a relapse into evil-doing. These categories are (1) the Borstal lad, (2) the habitual offender. These represent the opposite poles of criminality—the beginning and the end of a criminal career.

In the Appendix will be found the special regulations for dealing with each, and from their perusal it will be seen that the motive power used is in the appeal to the sense of Honour. This appeal is conducted primarily, and necessarily, through the natural instincts which desire comfort and rewards in ordinary human beings. They are simple enough, but in their simplicity is their value, because they teach the homely lesson, which the older criminal may have forgotten, and the younger not yet learnt, viz:—that by good behaviour and industry, and a proved effort to profit by the encouragement they receive, they may pass from a lower to a higher grade, with increasing privilege and comfort, until in the ultimate stages they are placed entirely upon their Honour, employed in positions of trust, free from supervision, and even outside the walls of the establishment. In this way the re-entry into free life is facilitated: semi-liberty precedes full liberty, and by breaking the abruptness of the change, rehabilitation or re-settlement under normal conditions of life is achieved.

Thus the lesson is slowly learnt that there is a reward for industry and good conduct—not only in what can be gained in material comfort, but that the delicate plant of self-respect, in many cases withered, but not quite dead, can blossom again; and from self-respect follows the respect of others, of those in authority; and after release, of those with whom they associate in the outer world.

Those who have watched these two movements—at Borstal and Camp Hill—have been struck by their boldness; but in their boldness has been their great success. The Borstal and Camp Hill experiments exactly illustrate the true meaning of 'prison reform,' i.e., the building up of character on the basis of strict discipline, obedience, and order, tempered by progressive stages of increasing trust, liberty, and material improvement of status. When to these influences operating inside, while the man or woman is still in custody, is added the ever-watchful care of a highly organized system of help and protection, on which all can rely on discharge, if ready and willing to respond to advice given and help offered, 'Prison reform', in the sense of the reform of the individual prisoner, is realized in its best and most practical way. It is not Utopian: it is a fact which can be verified by the records of the Borstal and Central Associations, which deal on discharge with these two special categories. It is not achieved by newspaper articles or angry denunciation of the existing system, or by the formulation of abstract theories concerning prison treatment. It is achieved by "personality," inside and outside the penal institution—personality stimulated by a lofty conception of duty to God and man. To deny these reforming influences in English Prisons is to misrepresent wilfully, and in ignorance of the facts, the great and good work that is being done.

As to the future, there seems to me to be three directions in which those who are pressing for prison reform might usefully proceed:—

1. The organization of Probation on large and well-considered national lines.

2. The application of some of the principles of Preventive Detention to our Penal Servitude system.

3. The co-ordination, with a view to the prevention of crime, of all organized effort, collective and individual, now existing in this country, and of which most of the value is wasted from the absence of unity of aim, and of mutual co-operation.

1. Though Probation is ancillary to the Prison System, and is closely allied to the actual administration of justice in the Courts of law, its method and working must be of profound interest and importance to all who desire to find alternatives, consistent with the due assertion of the law, to commitment to prison. This, as is so often said, should be the last and not the first resort. Custom, routine, and the fatal ease, and saving of trouble to all concerned, has, in the past, induced the tendency to regard the warrant of commitment to prison as the ordinary and only expedient for satisfying the claims of Justice. It is only of late years that the successful operation of Probation, or sursis á l'exécution de la peine in foreign countries, and notably in some of the States of America, has awakened a lively and growing interest in this method of finding an alternative to imprisonment; and here we have to steer a wise and prudent course between the Scylla of harsh infliction of a 'peine déshonorante' which imprisonment for a few days really is, and the Charybdis of undue leniency. This is the function of the Magistrate: on him depends a successful working of the system, and he must have a deciding voice as to its application. Put consistently with the free authority and discretion of the Court, it ought to be possible to create a national system, for which the Lord Chancellor, or Secretary of State, as Chief of the Magistracy, would be responsible. I would not advise the imposition of any official system independently of the Courts, but only that the political heads of the Judiciary should take steps to satisfy themselves that Probation, as a system, is working efficiently at every criminal court in the country, before whom offenders of all ages, liable to the penalty of imprisonment, are brought. It is the function of the Secretary of State to take steps to satisfy himself that the Police Forces of the country are working efficiently, without in any way interfering with the discretion of the local Police Authority in the management of their respective forces. This is done by a system of State-Inspection, and a certificate of efficiency when all is reported well. The same system might be applied to Probation. State control would only be exercised through an Inspector-General at Whitehall, who would be assisted by Chief Probation officers in the various judicial areas. These would be paid by the State, and a system could be devised by which the State granted a subsidy in aid of the salaries of the general body of Probation officers, who would be appointed locally under regulations approved by the Secretary of State. Such aid would be dependent, as in the case of Police, on an annual certificate of efficiency. By such means an admirable 'Salvage Corps' would be created. By 'Salvage' I mean a body of devoted men and women who, from knowledge of the character and history of individual cases, would be in a position to furnish the Courts with information and suggestions which would enable them to exercise a wise direction whether or not in any case Justice would be satisfied by granting a 'sursis', subject to satisfactory conditions and guarantees, to the penalty of imprisonment. Such a system would not conflict with the full authority and discretion of the Court, and would, at the same time, prevent Justice from striking blindly at the offender, by being in possession of material facts, which, under the present system, are often concealed from it.

Such a system would be a striking advance on the road of the individualization of the offender, which is the aim and purpose of the modern penal system in all civilized countries.

2. The principle of Preventive Detention, which might perhaps be extended with advantage, but with great care and prudence, to our Penal Servitude System, is that expressed by the Advisory Committee (Section 14 (4) of the Prevention of Crime Act, 1908, Part II), and the provision for After-care (Section 15 of the same Act).

Long sentences of penal servitude are now reported periodically to the Home Office for review and consideration. Without impinging in any way on the authority of the Court, which fixes the term of the sentence, it might be arranged that such reports should be accompanied by a report of an Advisory Committee, set up at each convict prison, whose opinion would be of value to the Secretary of State in deciding whether conditional licence under adequate safeguards could be granted, or whether the stern penalty of a sentence of penal servitude having been sufficiently expiated, there might be a commutation of the sentence to the less rigorous conditions of Preventive Detention. The great success which has attended the work of the Advisory Committee at Camp Hill seems to justify the extension of the principle, quite consistently with a due and exact regard for the interests of Justice and the protection of society.

Section 12 of the Prevention of Crime Act, 1908, gives power to the Secretary of State to commute in certain cases to Preventive Detention. An Advisory Committee could fitly advise as to the occasion for the exercise of this power.

3. In addressing the Central Committee of Aid Societies last year, I ventured to propose the foundation of a National Society for the Prevention of Crime. I was led to this proposal by the experience which has come to me in watching the operation of the great network of effort now employed in diverse capacities throughout the country, not only in the aid of prisoners discharged from ordinary or local prisons, but in the supervision of Borstal, Penal Servitude, and Preventive Detention cases through the admirable machinery of the Borstal and Central Associations. In addition to these recognised, and more or less State-aided, instruments for dealing with the actual offender, we have the preventive agencies for the supervision of cases discharged from Industrial and Reformatory Schools, as well as the large field of care and tutelage for those placed on Probation,—all these methods for after-care and prevention are co-ordinated with the help given by other benevolent or religious Societies, thus forming a compact whole of altruistic effort of what is known in France as 'Patronage', or a National life-saving apparatus.

My idea was to stabilize and unify all this somewhat unconnected effort by the formation of a Central Council, on which all persons or societies working in the field of reclamation, either of young or of old, could be brought, so to speak, under 'one umbrella'.

There would be Committees of such Central Council in every selected area or district, on which would be represented the local Aid Society, the local Probation officer, the Associate of the Borstal and Central Associations, agents of the Reformatory and Industrial School Department, and any local representatives for dealing with the care and employment of the young.

To such a body would be affiliated the associations which exist in many parts of the country for the care of the mentally defective.

There is a growing appreciation on the part of Magistrates, and the public generally, of the close and often undiscovered association between crime and mental deficiency. Steps are now being taken, notably in the Midlands and the North of England, for establishing a co-operation between the Police Authority, the Courts of law, and Committees of the County Council, working under the Mental Deficiency Act. If such co-operation could become general throughout the country, a new and formidable 'preventive' against many acts of petty and repeated lawlessness would be created, and there is little doubt that many persons of both sexes who hitherto have spent their lives in and out of Prison—the despair of the Courts, a source of perpetual trouble to Police, and of nuisance to their neighbours, would, on inquiry, and mental observation, be found to be 'irresponsibles', and proper subjects for medical care, rather than the grim severity of ceaseless and useless imprisonment. The long and mournful roll of incurable recidivists would cease to haunt our prisons, and public places; and under Institutional care, would, at least, be removed from evil-doing, if they did not regain, under medical care, their opportunity for reinstatement in normal industrious life.

It is in these directions that I think that the hope of dealing effectively with the ever-present criminal problem lies. Let those who are anxious to get to the heart of this problem know that the solution lies, not in abstract theories of so-called Prison Reform: not in academical discussion of the best prison system to adopt: not in the old vexed controversies of the comparative value of the cellular or associated plan, but in patient observation of every human being, while in the custody of the State for an infraction of its laws, and in aiding the reconstruction of a life that has failed, by the adoption of a system of After-care, on the lines I have described, or, which is far better still, in endeavouring to create such a network of preventive work throughout the land, that, as a nation, we may rejoice in being able to feel that, at least so far as human effort can avail, Prison, with all its consequences, shall be the last and not the first resort, which, in the absence of well-organized preventive and curative measures, it has too often been in the past.

CHAPTER II.

THE PRISON COMMISSION: OFFENCES, AND PUNISHMENTS.

The prisons in England and Wales are divided into (a) Convict, and (b) Local.

(a) Convict Prisons were created specially to contain convicts under sentence of transportation prior to, or in lieu of, removal to the penal colonies, and were constituted by special Acts of Parliament passed from time to time, which provided for their separate administration and inspection. In 1850, they were all placed under a Board of Directors who exercise all the powers formerly vested in the various bodies who managed them.

(b) Local Prisons.—By the Prison Act, 1877, county and borough prisons, which formerly belonged to the local authorities, were transferred to and vested in the Secretary of State, a permanent Commission, not exceeding five members, being created for the purpose of aiding the Secretary of State in carrying out the provisions of the Act.

In 1878, when the local prisons were thus transferred, there were, therefore, a Board of Directors of Convict Prisons, consisting of four members (including the Chairman) and a Board of Commissioners, consisting of four members (including the Chairman). The then Chairman of the Directors was appointed also Chairman of the Commissioners; but, except to this extent, at that time no further amalgamation took place, each class of prisons being administered separately. The two Boards still have separate legal existence, but under the Prison Act, 1898, every Prison Commissioner is, by virtue of his Office, also a Director of Convict Prisons. The Boards are now, in fact, if not in law, amalgamated.

The control of all Prisons is thus vested in a body of Commissioners, who act subject to the control and authority of the Secretary of State, who is himself directly responsible to Parliament for the whole administration.

In addition to the Convict and Local Prisons, the Commissioners are also responsible for the administration of the Institutions established by the Prevention of Crime Act, 1908, for dealing with:—

(a) young offenders, 16-21—Borstal Institutions.

(b) habitual criminals under 'Preventive Detention.' They are also responsible for the care and control of Habitual Inebriates sentenced under the Act of 1898; but, as pointed out later in dealing with the question of Inebriety, there are, at the present time, no inmates in custody.

Offences against the criminal law can be classed generally into two divisions—Indictable (i.e. tried on indictment before a Superior Court): Summary (i.e. tried before a Court of Summary Jurisdiction). The Superior Courts are (1) Assizes: (2) General Quarter Sessions. (1) The Assize Courts are itinerant criminal tribunals created by Commission to Judges of the High Court to try prisoners presented for trial by the grand juries for the several Counties in which the Assize is to be held. They can try any indictable offence whatever, and are the most important of criminal Courts of first instance. In London, a special Court, known as the Central Criminal Court, has been created by Statute, having the same powers as Courts of Assize, and sits monthly. (2) Quarter Sessions. These are held once a Quarter, and were originally meetings of the Justices of the Peace of a particular County. More recently, certain cities and boroughs have obtained the privilege of a local Court of Quarter Sessions, presided over by a Recorder, who must be a barrister. These Courts can try all indictable offences except such felonies as are punishable by Penal Servitude for Life or by Death.

Summary Justice is administered generally by Petty Sessional Courts composed of unpaid local Magistrates, not necessarily of legal experience, nominated by the Lord Chancellor; but in the Metropolis and other Cities and populous places, e.g., Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, etc., by paid Stipendiaries who are barristers of standing and repute, appointed by the Crown. The great mass of petty offences against the law is dealt with by these tribunals. Of late years, the powers of the Summary Courts have been extended so as to include certain indictable cases. Thus, young persons under 16, when charged with any indictable offence whatever, except homicide, may be dealt with summarily, subject to certain conditions; also adults, when charged with various forms of larceny, theft, embezzlement, &c., where the value of the property stolen does not exceed twenty pounds.

The punishments that the Superior Courts can impose are, generally speaking, penal servitude for grave offences, and ordinary imprisonment for lesser offences. The special penalty of commitment to a Borstal Institution, or to a State Inebriate Reformatory, may only be imposed by a Superior Court. Superior Courts have, in addition, the power to order Whipping in the case of Robbery with Violence, and of persons deemed to be Incorrigible Rogues under the Vagrancy Act, and for the offence of Procuration, under the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1912. They have power also to order a person to be placed under the Supervision of Police for a fixed period after his punishment. In the Summary Courts the principal punishment is by fine. According to the Judicial Statistics for 1913, fines were inflicted in about 88 per cent. of the cases convicted for petty offences. Where a fine is not paid, imprisonment is generally ordered to take place in satisfaction in lieu of the fine. Out of 128,686 persons committed to Prison by the Summary Courts in 1913-4, no less than 74,461 were imprisoned in default of payment of fine, the amount of imprisonment being regulated by statute in proportion to the amount of fine. Under the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1914, it is now obligatory on the part of the Courts to allow time in which to pay the fine imposed. In 1918-19, the number of persons received into prison in default of payment had fallen enormously, only 5,264 being received, or about 2 per cent. of the total sentenced by the Courts to pay a fine, as compared with 15 per cent. in 1913-14. Though the maximum term which may be imposed by Summary Courts is limited to six months, in practice the great majority of the sentences awarded do not exceed three months.

There are also the Juvenile Courts which deal with offenders under sixteen, as to which particulars are given in a later chapter.

There is power also under the Probation of Offenders Act, 1907, for any Court (either Superior or Summary) to release an offender on probation—the former, in lieu of imposing a sentence of imprisonment, or in the case of the latter, without proceeding to conviction. The offender may be discharged conditionally on entering into recognizances to be of good behaviour, and to appear for sentence or conviction at any time within three years. The Court may, in addition, order the offender to pay damages for injuries, or compensation. A recognizance under this Act may contain a condition that the offender shall be placed under the supervision of a Probation Officer, and other conditions may be that he shall not associate with undesirable persons, and that he shall abstain from intoxicating liquors, and, generally, that he shall lead an industrious life. Details as to the operation of the law will be given in a subsequent chapter.

Previously to 1907, there was no Court of Criminal Appeal. The general principle had been that in criminal cases no appeal was allowed to either party on any question of fact; the only resource for a wrongfully convicted man was to petition the Secretary of State. A prisoner now has an absolute right to appeal on any question of law, and, if leave be obtained, on any question of mixed fact and law. He also has the right to appeal against the sentence passed on him. Neither the Crown's Prerogative of Mercy, nor the powers of the Home Secretary to institute such inquiry as he may think fit, are affected by the Act.