XXVIII. PRISON DISCIPLINE IN LONDON.

BY J. ANGUS CROLL, J. P., Late High SheRIFF OF LONDON, ETC., ETC., CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE PRISON ASSOCIATION.

[The following letter is addressed to HENRY POWNALL, Esq., Chairman of the Middlesex Magistrates, by a member of the Board. It was communicated to the Corresponding Secretary of the Prison Association under the following circumstances: A meeting of the Board of Middlesex Magistrates has been appointed to hold a general discussion on the question of prison discipline, at an early day. Mr. Croll writes to the secretary, asking that he will send him the reports of the Association, adding, that "he desires to be in possession of all possible information so that the discussion may lead to some practical result." The paper, as will be seen, was prepared for the meridian of London, but not only, like the almanacs, will it answer for "all the region round about," but even for distant lands. It contains many wise suggestions and much food for thought.]

MY DEAR MR. POWNALL-When Serjeant Payne's amendment was under consideration at a recent magistrates' meeting, the discussion was necessarily confined to the question immediately before us the erection of a new prison. Some of us, however, who were in the majority on that occasion, felt that the much wider question of prison discipline in general was involved, and under that conviction I voted for the amendment.

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I had intended to call the attention of my brother magistrates to this subject, by placing a notice to that effect on the agenda paper, but on further consideration I prefer to do so, in the first instance, in the present form. If I need any apology or excuse for doing so, find it in the fact that on a subject of such deep and general interest an expression of individual opinion can scarcely be deemed an intrusion; and this is a subject to which I have devoted much time and thought. Whether the conclusions at which I have arrived will command the assent of yourself and my brother magistrates, I can not tell. But if I aid in exciting discussion and eliciting expressions of opinion, I shall have attained my end.

It may help to promote an agreement of opinion as to what our system of prison discipline ought to be, if we can first of all agree as to the ends at which we should aim. They seem to be the following:

I. The vindication of justice by the punishment of crime.

Upon this point there will be little difference of opinion. Our very existence as a magistracy implies it. In the words of the good old Book, we are to be "a terror to evil-doers," and "not to bear the sword in vain."

II. The protection of society by repressing the depredations of the criminal.

On this point, too, there will be general agreement. The public look to us for protection in property and person. Rates and taxes are levied and paid, that fraud and violence may be repressed, and that honest men may enjoy their rights in security and peace. III. The reformation of the criminal himself.

We ought to aim at this, because the criminal is in many cases himself the victim of circumstances. He has been born and nurtured in crime. He is the heir of an entail of vice and misery, coming down through many generations. When we remember the training the child has received, can we wonder that the man is what we find him? I do not say this to palliate his guilt or avert his punishment. He has broken the laws of his country, and must suffer the penalty. But society is not altogether without blame in the matter. He has been sinned against by others. It is but just that society should seek to redress the wrong and restore the criminal.

And yet, further, the reformation of the offender, where it can be effected, is the surest and the cheapest way of protecting society against his depredations. If we make our prison discipline truly reformatory, if we succeed in transforming the criminal into a peaceful, orderly, law-abiding citizen, we not only thin the ranks of the dangerous classes, but we recruit our own. We have thus secured a double benefit. He who has hitherto been a reckless destroyer or wasteful consumer, becomes a producer. We not only rid ourselves of an element of danger, disorder and expense, but we gain an additional element of strength and safety.

An adequate and satisfactory system of prison discipline must, then, include the reformation of the criminal, the punishment of crime and the protection of society.

But there is a general and growing conviction that prison discipline, as at present administered, is not successful in attaining any one of these ends.

Justice is not vindicated in the punishment of crime. To the hardened and habitual criminal imprisonment has no terrors. He looks upon the jail as his home. He prefers it to the casual ward. He finds it more comfortable than the work-house. It is less irksome than a life of honest industry. All who are engaged in the

adininistration of justice know that petty crimes are committed with the express purpose of gaining imprisonment.* To the young and inexperienced, to those who have been betrayed into the commission of crime, to those whose circumstances and education have been above that of the criminal classes, imprisonment is a terrible penalty. But these are the least guilty of the inmates of our jails. Recent legislation, authorizing the classification of misdemeanants, has done something to rectify this injustice. But even yet it remains to some extent true that we make our punishment heaviest to those who deserve it least, while to the hardened, habitual criminal it almost ceases to be a punishment at all.

Nor is society adequately protected from injury. There may be exaggeration in the constant complaints we hear of the increased daring and prevalence of crime; but it is only too evident that the dangerous classes are scarcely more than kept in check. If some crimes are diminishing, others are increasing. And it may be doubted whether person and property are more safe now than they were twenty years ago. Nor must we forget the enormous cost at which society purchases the amount of protection which it enjoys. The rapid increase of police and prison charges, during the last few years, are creating wide-spread dissatisfaction. Many valuable proposals are negatived from the increased cost they would involve. When we reckon up the charges upon the public for the arrest, trial and detention of the prisoner, it may be doubted whether his depredations, if he had been at large, would have involved a heavier cost than the expense of his conviction and punishment.

And the criminal is not reclaimed. That there are cases in which prison discipline has a reformatory tendency may be admitted. The governors and chaplains of our jails can point to instances in which their zealous endeavors have not been in vain. But are not these rare and exceptional cases? For one prisoner reformed, many are corrupted. It is to be feared that in the great majority of cases imprisonment gives an impetus in the downward course of the convict. He becomes more demoralized and degraded while within the walls of the prison. He leaves his cell ripe for deeds of crime and violence. The visiting magistrates can hardly fail to notice how the very expression of the prisoner's face undergoes a change for the worse while under sentence. And, too often, only a short period elapses before he is again arrested, or "wanted," for some new outrage. The almost unanimous testimony of our police magistrates

*This is not so-certainly to any appreciable extent-in the United States. COR. SEC.

and judges is, that there is no class so hopelessly reprobate as that which has been hardened to crime through a career of imprisonment.

These facts are patent and notorious. They raise the question whether there is not something radically wrong in the present system of prison discipline. The fault does not lie with the officers who work the system. My experience as a magistrate goes to show that, as a whole, the staff of men who superintend our prisons and houses of correction are efficient, and devoted to their work. The fault, as I conceive, lies deeper, and is to be found in the fact that the system itself is altogether unnatural. The prisoner is put into a position utterly unlike his life out of doors. It is out of gear with the rest of his existence. It has no point of contact with his habits of life up to the time of his incarceration. It affords no training or discipline for the life he has to lead after his liberation. Here, as 1 believe, lies very much of the mischief. And by altering our system in this respect we should, as I think, find its cure.

It is easy to detect the evil. Is it possible to suggest a remedy! I venture to hope that the plan which I proceed briefly to sketch out may be found to contain at least the elements of an improved system.

I propose, in the first place, to extend and develop the principle of employing prisoners in their own trades. We already do this to some extent, as for instance in the case of bakers, tailors, shoemakers and others. The principle is not a new one. So far as it has been tried, the experiment is found to work well. I only plead for a better and more extensive organization of what is already successful as far as it has been attempted.

In regard to artisans and handicraftsmen, there would be no difficulty. They might easily be employed to work under the conditions to be stated hereafter.

Persons of good education are often under sentence for offences which involve no disqualification to act as time-keepers, task-masters, and superintendents. Invest them with responsibility, give them an adequate motive to be faithful, remove them from temptation, and they might be employed, of course under the eye of the prison officials, in superintending the work of their fellow prisoners.

But unskilled laborers form the bulk of prisoners throughout Great Britain. They have nothing but weight of body and strength of muscle. Without trade or handicraft, they always have been and always will be mere "hewers of wood and drawers of water." For this class of prisoners the proper and natural application of their labor would seem to be the cultivation of land. Let a farm be secured, large or small as the case may require. Let it be tilled by

spade husbandry, and fertilized by prison sewage. Crops of grain and vegetables might be raised and cattle fed sufficient, in the majority of cases, to supply not only the prisons but the asylums and other county establishments. There might even be a surplus for sale after all these requirements had been provided for. The employment of unskilled laborers upon the land in the way proposed would have many advantages. It would give them the sort of occupation for which they are fitted, in which they can be profitably employed, and to which on the expiration of their sentence they

must return.

Exceptional cases would, of course, arise, not coming under any of these classes; but they would be rare, and might be dealt with by exceptional rules.

In the next place, I propose that (subject, of course, to the usual surveillance and control of the surgeon) the prisoners under sentence should receive rations fixed on the lowest possible dietary scale. They must not actually starve; but, so far as the food provided for them at the public expense goes, I would only keep them just above the starvation point. All beyond that must be paid for by the pris oners themselves out of the wages earned by them.* As has just been said, each prisoner is to follow his own trade. Work is to be given out, and paid for on a certain fixed scale. The prescribed task being finished, the amount of wages due should be divided into two or perhaps three portions.

One portion would go to the man himself, to be expended at his own option in the purchase of rations beyond the amount supplied to him by the prison authorities. We simply provide out of the rates that he shall not starve while under sentence. All beyond bread and water, or some such meagre diet, he must earn by his own labor.

A second portion of his earnings should be appropriated as a contribution toward the expenses incurred by the public in maintaining the prisoner. Why should the rate payers be taxed to support a criminal, if he can be made to support himself? It is neither just nor expedient to levy taxes for the maintenance of convicts beyond the amount absolutely necessary. Instead of being kept at the public expense, he should be made to keep himself. The cost of the prison establishment should, as far as possible, be levied upon the convict, not upon the rate payer. It is the produce of his labor, not that of the honest man out of doors, upon which the expenses of the imprisonment should be levied.

*This was Captain Maconochie's plan. COR. SEO.