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give a stimulus to the wits and energies. And to render this stimulus as pungent as possible, the prisoner should be set to climb a scale of discipline, bitterly penal at the bottom, though tolerable, by comparison, at the top. But at Pentonville the discipline is of a dead level of uniform monotony throughout, except in the case of the few convicts who are of necessity taken from their cells to assist in the service of the prison. There is no incentive whatever to obedience and industry, except the threat of punishment. There are no marks, no hope of remission; the nine months of solitude must be endured to the last day. Sir George Grey, with a gallantry that does him infinite credit, allows the women to redeem a third of their sentences, while the men are restricted to a fourth. But it is rather hard on the men-whose sex, after all, is no fault of their own-to have nearly ten weeks snipped off that fourth by the refusal of remission in the separation stage. There was, I believe, an awkward obstacle, till recently, to all improvements at Pentonville and Millbank. Fortunately, however, that obstacle is now removed, and we will hope that a thorough recast of the cellular discipline may be the consequence.

The other desideratum to which I referred is the establishment of intermediate prisons. I allow that the new "special" classes are, in some measure, a substitute; but the men in these classes, while still in contact with other convicts, are exposed to temptations from which they ought to be free: nor is it possible in such circumstances to trust the men under ordeal with the amount of freedom necessary fairly to test their reformation. Moreover, one great purpose of the intermediate prison is wholly lost sight of. That there are certain special classes, which no one ever sees, at Chatham and Portland, where the better convicts are allowed considerable liberty without their abusing their privilege, is not a fact likely to strike and impress the public mind. But when it is known that the convict system has been rendered so genuine that the directors venture to send out parties of 50 and 100 men, farming or road-making, to give them la clef des champs, trusting for their safe custody, not to numerous and vigilant warders, but to their own sense and self-interest-this is a fact that is certain to rouse interest, to generate confidence, and to facilitate immensely the admission of the liberates into the labour market. I am confident, however, that the system will not long be left incomplete for want of intermediate prisons, for one is already at work, and with thorough success. Under a strong stress of criticism, Sir J. Jebb, in March, 1862, sent, by way of experiment, a party of 100 selected convicts to Broadmoor in Berkshire; their employment was to make roads, lay out recreation grounds, and reclaim land for the benefit of the Criminal Lunatic Asylum, which had then been just built on the rough heath. A lodging was found for them in an out-building of the asylum. I visited the establishment a fortnight ago, and found that it only needed a reduction of the lavish creaturecomforts, and some further provision for mental recreation, to render it an intermediate prison of the best type. Though the men are in

the freest association day and night, foul language is never overheard, the work done is palpably very considerable; the officers assured me that everything worked most smoothly, that misconduct was almost unknown, that only three men had incurred a remand to the Public Works, and that only one attempt had been made to escape, though that unluckily was successful. I may mention one specimen in proof of the way in which the men could be, and were, trusted. Incendiary fires have of late been very common in the neighbourhood, and the heath is disfigured with ugly patches of burnt heather and charred fir-trees. I was told in the simplest way, as though it were nothing to wonder at, that parties of convicts had been sent off to put out some of these fires. I mixed and conversed with the convicts, and from their manner and remarks, I was persuaded that the description given by the officials was not too flattering. It is incredible that so successful an experiment can be suffered to remain merely an experiment.

I have spoken hitherto of the male convicts only; concerning the women there is less to report. It is well known that women are far worse to manage, and resist what is for their good far more vehemently than men. Possibly this was the reason why the new directors" tried their prentice hand" on man before they meddled with the female prisons. But the reform once begun, has begun in earnest; a new code of regulations is on the point of being issued, which sweeps away in one summary abolition all the old rules, and substitutes the mark system in their stead. If this scheme is thoroughly carried out, and the rations docked about 20 per cent., the discipline of Brixton Prison, which for years has been most unsatisfactory, will at last, I hope, be transformed. The Fulham Refuge, where the plenty-to-eat plan was in the fullest operation (a wicked punster of my acquaintance used to call it the Fill'em Refuge) will not improbably be abandoned.

Meanwhile one item absolutely necessary to the success of the amended system has been already provided; I mean the refuge-in no sense a prison-where the women worthy of such a chance are prepared, on the same general plan as that adopted for the men in their intermediate stage, for their restoration to society. Government can create a prison, but not a refuge, for women; that is a more delicate piece of work, which needs earnest private benevolence for its accomplishment. Thanks to the indefatigable energy of Sir Walter Crofton, such a refuge has already been formed in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury. A forest of difficulties had to be cut through, I can assure you, before the thing was done, and an odious amount of drudgery in the way of money-begging to be undergone. And by the way, as all the money needed is not raised even yet, allow me to do a stroke of business on the spot by informing the section that the smallest contribution will be thankfully received.

But let us take a glance now at the state of affairs with regard to gaols. In June last, just before Parliament died, the Prisons' Bill which had been smothered the year before, was rescued from "the

massacre of the innocents," and passed. Our thanks for its safe delivery are mainly due, I believe, to the Great Cham of prison discipline, Sir Walter Crofton. The importance of the new Act lies in what it permits rather in what it compels our prison authorities to do. Not but what there is some wholesome compulsion in it, too, concerning certain items, as to which all controversy is now at an end. Parsimonious justices, for instance, must now find separate cells, and indulgent justices hard labour, for all their prisoners; and the Home Secretary is armed with power to enforce obedience on these and other points. But as regards the introduction of new principles in gaol management, the Act is not imperative. The prevalent type of prison discipline at present is the separate system. The prisoner spends his whole term in a separate cell; except in chapel, at school, and at exercise, he is alone: from first to last the uniform monotony of the discipline remains unchanged; labour is an alleviation of, rather than ingredient in the punishment, and in many prisons it is very light. The reformatory qualities of this system are chiefly negative; it prevents contamination, it promotes reflection, (though the reflections are as likely to be pernicious as salutary,) and the solitude by its effects on the brain and nerves renders the prisoners highly impressible. The merit of the system lies in the opportunity which it gives to the chaplain, and where the chaplain has been the right man for the work the happiest results have followed. Still this method is too artificial, not to say too morbid. I have been with earnest chaplains on their prison rounds, and, as I marked the effects of their ministrations on the faces and demeanour of their patients, I felt as if I were in a spiritual hothouse. The new Act does not compel any great amendment of this system, for the only provision directly bearing on the matter is this, that for the first three months, at least, the prisoner shall be kept to hard labour, the severity of which may afterwards be, in some measure, mitigated at the discretion of the justices. It is obvious that this rule may be literally obeyed, and the discipline in consequence rather worsened than bettered. But the gist of the Act, it is well known, lies in the opportunity it presents to all prison authorities to adopt the Winchester system, which Sir W. Crofton described to the section last year-that is to say, a modification of the mark system, under which the prisoner, by his own strenuous exertions, may raise himself from a bitterly penal condition, to a state of comparative

ease.

The new Gaol Act then, permissive and not compulsory, is plainly not final. It would have been premature to impose the Winchester system, until it had been tested by further experience. But a few years hence, when its value has been more fully demonstrated, we may look for a bolder measure; and when that measure comes, let us hope that it will give the gaol-bird what the convict already has, the right of redeeming some portion of his forfeited liberty by the sweat of his brow. Without that right-for the hope of earlier freedom is an inducement beside which all others are insignificant

the mark system is crippled. The Winchester discipline is very admirable, but why should it be worked by horse-power when we might have steam-power?

There is one clause, the 33rd, in the new Act, which contains an important suggestion. "Where two or more prisons are within the jurisdiction of the same prison authority, that authority may carry into effect the requisitions of this Act with [respect to the separation of prisoners, or the enforcement of hard labour, by appropriating particular prisons to particular classes of prisoners." In the next Gaol Act I hope to see this somewhat faint suggestion developed into a code of definite instructions. To extract the maximum of penal and reformatory power from our gaols they must be modelled on the same plan as the convict prisons. We can never fully develope our plans within the walls and narrow confines of a common gaol. For prisoners under long sentences, we want, during the later portions of their imprisonment, establishments which shall serve the same purpose for them as Chatham and Broadmoor do for English, Spike Island and Lusk for Irish convicts. Mr. Baker is about to lay before you a scheme for such supplementary institutions. Whether we shall agree in all his details remains to be seen, but I think his main principles are incontestible.

I must beg you to notice that all recent reforms and proposed amendments in gaol discipline tend to assimilate that discipline more and more to what has hitherto been called the Irish, but I hope is soon to be called the British Convict System. And this is what we require one uniform penal system for all sorts and conditions of habitual offenders.

But when we have got this system we shall still have the farther problem to solve, how to sweep to the utmost certainty within its grasp the criminal classes. Allow me to state very briefly, in conclusion, what seem to me the chief desiderata towards the solution.

I. The first necessity is a classification of offences; a classification of the simplest kind, for it will consist merely in placing them all under one or other of the two heads-casual crime and habitual crime. Suppose, for the sake of convenience, we use the old words "misdemeanour" for the former, and "felony " for the latter. In the annual criminal statistics all offences committed within the year are arranged under certain titles about 90 in number. Glancing down the catalogue, the merest tyro can distinguish between misdemeanours and felonies. Speaking roughly, offences against the person and malicious offences against property are misdemeanours, and all other offences against property felonies. The judicial officers should be allowed the fullest discretion as to the length of the sentences passed on misdemeanants and incipient felons; but for second and subsequent felonies the law, and not the judge, should prescribe the sentence; and prescribe it on the simple principle that every fresh sentence for felony shall be longer than the last by a certain fixed amount at least. The judge should have power to increase, but not to lessen this minimum.

II.-I am one of a small body of enthusiasts who believe that with a scale of "cumulative" sentences for felonies rigidly enforced, backed by a sound penal system, professional crime might be extirpated within this century. There have been so many changes of late in our penal laws, and these changes produce such a pernicious uncertainty and confusion, that I am loath to plead for another. Still some change is requisite, for at present there is a most awkward gap in our scale of secondary punishment. The highest legal term of imprisonment is two years, the lowest of penal servitude, five. By the last Penal Servitude Act sentences for three and four years were abolished, partly because the judges in their tenderness dealt far too freely in these light sentences, and partly because under the old régime three or four years penal servitude was not a harder punishment than 18 months' or two years' imprisonment. A scale of "cumulative" sentences would do away with the first objection, while the increased stringency of the convict system has already done away with the second. I may mention, by the way, that judicial tenderness, refusing to be baulked by a ruthless Parliament, finds a vent now in sentencing to short terms of imprisonment many of the poor felons who, before the change in the law, would have incurred penal servitude.

There is only one obstacle to the adoption of the innovations I advocate, namely, the difficulty of ascertaining what, if any, was the last sentence for felony incurred by the re-convicted offender whose fresh sentence is under consideration. But with a police force yearly increasing in efficiency, with criminal registers properly kept, and with appliances such as photography at our command, this difficulty should soon be overcome. Meanwhile, I see no hardship in calling upon every convicted felon, whose antecedents cannot be ascertained, to prove that he has hitherto been free from felonious taint. If he cannot or will not, give society the benefit of the doubt, and sentence him as an old offender.

Does the present Administration of the Poor Law create any obstacles to the Reform of Criminals and the Repression of Crime? And if so, how could such obstacles be removed? By FREDERICK HILL.

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T the threshold of the inquiry which we are called upon this morning to make-namely, whether the present administration of the poor law creates any obstacles to the reform of criminals and the repression of crime; and, if so, how can such obstacles be removed?—is the question, which among the chief causes of crime are affected by the working of the poor law? Directly or indirectly, I should hold that all the main causes of crime are more or less

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