LONDON
ARTHUR C. FIFIELD
44 FLEET STREET, B.C
Preface
THE last Prison Blue Book (the Report of the
Commissioners of Prisons and the Directors
of Convict Prisons for 1903-4), while it shows an
appreciable advance and improvement in the
management of our penal establishments, reveals
also how very much there is still waiting to be
done. Officialism, as we know, is sadly slow to
move ; and we are yet a long way from getting at
the root of all this matter, namely, the trans-
formation of the Criminal into a useful citizen,
and the extinction of Recidivism. Penology,
though made much of as a science on the Con-
tinent and in the United States, is little studied
in Britain ; and there is little doubt that in some
respects even Russian and Siberian prisons are
more humanely conducted than ours.
The following chapters are a small contribution
to the subject. It is easy to see, for any one who
looks into the heart of the people to-day in our
islands, that deliberate criminality and perversely
» anti-social instinct, though of course present, are
not so very widespread. The immense majority
of cases that pass through our courts are cases
arising out of sheer need, or wretched education
and surroundings, and would disappear with the
establishment of decent social conditions. But
at present, as the worker, whether in town or
country, is unable to secure employment and the
means of honest hving except by favour of another
man — as society gives him no rigfU to employment
I and to work for a living — what wonder that he
endeavours to secure a living by means
in the eye of society he has no right ~
Changes no doubt are coming, and better
conditions. Meanwhile, however, it is necessary
that our treatment of the Criminal should be an
aid to progress, and not an obstruction — as it so
often is to-day. Mr. Charlton T. Lewis, President
of the National Prison Association of the United
States, has said that " to consign a man to prison
is commonly to enrol him in the criminal class "
{see Appendix C). But surely, if we are to have
prisons at all, their action and result ought to be
just the opposite.
I have ventured to indicate in the first few
chapters of this little book some of the reforms in
Prison management and Criminal procedure which
are most needed, and which might at once be
pressed forward ; and in the Note at the end of
Chapter IV I have made a list of these. Coincident
changes must no doubt also take place in our
Police-system, and to these I have alluded in
Chapter V. Finally, since there is a growing
feeling on aU hands, especially among advanced
officials and criminologists, that prisons and pun-
ishment are in their present form outworn, and
productive of as much hajra els good, I have
endeavoured (in Chapter VI) to sketch a state of
affairs in which the whole system of government
by violence will lapse and become antiquated,
leaving society free to shape itself by voluntary
methods according to its own good sense : feeling
assured that if society has good sense it will be able
to shape itself in this way, and if it has not there
does not appear much likelihood at present of its
rulers being able to supply the deficiency,
I
January, 1905.
I Penal Systems, Past and Present
II Law and Punishment
III The Sources of Crime
IV Prison Reform
V The Police System
VI Non-Governmental Society
Appendix —
A The Solitary System .
B The Indeterminate Sentence
C The Probation System
D Corporal Punishment .
£ Capital Punishment
F The Treatment of Unconvicted Prisoners
G A Court of Criminal Appeal
know not whether Laws be right.
Or whether Laws be wrong ;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong.
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long,
Bui this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother^s life.
And the sad world began.
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.
This too I know — and wise it were
If each could know the same —
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame.
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.
— Ballad of Reading Gaol,
PRISONS, POLICE AND
PUNISHMENT
PENAL SYSTEMS, PAST AND PRESENT »
"^HE penal systems of ail countries probably
pass through much the same stages of evolu-
tion. They begin with Revenge — " an eye for an
eye, and a tooth for a tooth " ; they pass on to the
idea of Punishment — a semi-theological conception,
a sort of sacrifice to the goddess of Justice ; then
they adopt the method of Deterrence or Terrorism —
society itself stricken with fear, trjnng to stamp out
criminality by fear ; and only at the last, if at all,
do they become human. Only at the last does the
majesty of society, forgetting its own little fears,
descend to the work of Reclamation, and to make
the criminal once more into a fellow-citizen and a
brother.
Our pubKc opinion happily is rapidly passing into
this last stage ; but our penal system itself lingers
in the stages of Terrorism and Punishment. It may
be necessary to say a few words on these stages.
' Given originally as an address.
lo PRISONS, POLICE AND PUNISHMENT
And first on the subject of Punishment. We need
not discuss the theory or abstract meaning of this
term. It is sufficient to point out that pubHc opin-
ion is rapidly coming to see the incongruity and even
absurdity of its actual apphcation in the courts.
The country squire or J. P. who, in his own person
or in that of his forbears, has filched a common from
the villagers, punishes with lofty sense of justice the
farm-labourer who appropriates a goose ;
The law condemDS the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the c
But leaves the greater felon loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The judge whose moral relations are notoriously
unsatisfactory is virtuously severe over some youth
who has been carried away by his passions, and sen-
tences him to a year or two of hard labour. Such
situations are common enough. It is clear indeed
that human nature renders them unavoidable as
long as our present legal system continues ; but their
incongruity is becoming every day more patent.
Of course it may be said, and is said, that the ad-
ministrator of the law does not punish in his own
name, but in that of society. He acts not as an err-
ing individual, but as the arm of the corporate body.
That is why he wears the scarlet and ermine. But
then, what is society that it should punish a man ?
What does the great Institution of Law, for all its
rules and precedents and agelong experience, know
of the temptations, the struggles, the exasperations,
of the individual criminal — of the human soul within
him — that it should sentence and condemn ? What
is the Institution that it should clothe itself in the
garment of Righteousness and Judgment ?
Here is a man who murdered his wife the other
day. What a generous, affectionate fellow he was,
dark, and with a brow just for the moment like
thunder when vexed, but so really gentle ; and de-
voted to his children. His wife a perfect shrew, her
digestion all wrong. She tore at him with her
tongue, aiming always at galled and weak places.
One day, transported with anger, he struck her a
heavy blow. She reeled and fell, and never spoke
again. He, transfixed with grief, also hardly spoke
again. The judge put on the black cap. {It was
the idea of Righteousness and Punishment that the
judge had in his mind.) The neighbours remon-
strated — a petition was got up — a hundred signa-
tures — quite a number for a working man's friends ;
but it was so much waste paper — the man weis
hanged without mercy.*
• Take, for instance, the following case from the daily
papers of August lO, 1897: "Thomas Lloyd, who has
been lying in Walton Gaol, Liverpool, under sentence of
death for the murder of his wife, was executed yesterday
morning. Reporters were not admitted to the execution,
but an eye-witness of the execution stated that Lloyd
walked calmly and firmly towards the scafiold. When
he came in sight of it, however, he turned ashy pale, and
for a mornent seemed to be paralyzed with grief. He
stopped and gave a great sob, but in a moment recovered
and said, ' I am ready,' and resumed his walk to the
scaffold. Billington, the executioner, gave Lloyd a drop
of six feet, and death, it is stated, was instantaneous.
Application for a reprieve had been made to the Home
Secretary on the ground of the great provocation whicli
Lloyd received, but Sir Matthew White Ridley declined
to interfere with the sentence. It transpired at the trial
It is this idea of Punishment, and the obvious im-
possibility of awarding punishment in any rational
way, which makes judges and magistrates so hope-
lessly at sea over their sentences. What is the
proper punishment for murdering your wife ? or what
is the proper punishment for forging a cheque of
£ioo ? Say, what is it ? One judge tries long sen-
tences, another tries short sentences ; another gives
a heavy sentence on one occasion, and a light sentence
for the same offence on another occasion — just to
make things equal in that way. But no one has any
reasonable system ; for obviously there is no such
thing, nor can be.
Does it follow from all this that society must leave
offenders alone ? Not at all. It is clear that society
will, and indeed must protect itself, against those
whom it considers injurious to itself. Nor is it easy
to give a reason why it should not do so, since self-
preservation is the first law of nature. But there is
a great difference between society protecting itself,
and society punishing the criminal. The whole
attitude is different.
Thus we come to the next stage — that of Deter-
rence, Criminals must be deterred. They must be
terrorized, so that those who have come to prison
once, won't come again, and others will not come at
all — and society will thus be safe from its own wild .
that Lloyd's married life was most unhappy, the murdered
woman being of very bad temper and aggravating dis-
position. Among those most anxious to obtain Lloyd's
reprieve was a stepson, who in a statement said that the
condemned mao was a good husband, and was, in fact, as
good as gold."
children ! This is a less theological and more positive
stage.
It would not do to say that Deterrence is of no use.
That would be too strong a statement. It is pro-
bable that Fear — the fear of the gallows, fear of the
lash, fear of the prison, or of the social stigma it
brings with it — keeps a certain number of people
back from crime. But not so very many. In most
cases, it only makes thera more careful about being
found out.
It is remarkable indeed to find how little effect
is attributed to Severity by some who have studied
this subject. The Rev. W. D. Morrison, who as
Prison Chaplain has had a large experience, says :■ —
" John Bright once said — Force is no remedy, and
as far as the criminal population is concerned, this
remark is hterally true. Force, in the shape of
punishment, no matter how severe you make it, will
not keep down crime. If the penal laws of the past
teach us anything, they teach us that crime cannot
be put down by mere severity." '
Allowing however that a certain percentage are
actually deterred from breaking the laws by fear —
we have to remember what an unworthy motive this
is. Fear may make a man conform to the respecta-
bilities, but it never yet made a good citizen. It
may be necessary to make use of fear sometimes,
but it must be remembered that it is the lowest and
least desirable motive that can be set in operation.
The causes of crime go deeper even than Fear can
touch, and till we reach them we are not very far on
our way.
^^L * Humane Science Lectures (George Bell), p. 87.
Every one has read of the Vagabondage in Eliza-
bethan times, and the frightful penalties, the brand-
ings, floggings, hangings that were vainly put in
force against it. We are amazed now to think that
authorities could have believed that these things
would have any effect — when the economic causes
that produced those tribes of houseless tramps — the
alterations in the tenure of land,the dissolution of the
Monasteries, and of the Towns' Guilds, etc., are
so clear to us. Yet to-day we still believe in the
hocus-pocus of floggings, hangings, and imprison-
ments — though the economic causes of nine-tenths
of our crime are equally patent to anyone who will
take the trouble to look into them. " Crime," says
Mr. Morrison again, " springs from disorders in our
social system, and until these disorders are healed
or alleviated, crime will continue to flourish in our
midst, no matter how severe and strong you may
make the penal law. Some of these disorders consist
of physical or mental infirmities ; some of economic
hardships and vicissitudes ; and some in the low
standards of life and conduct which prevail in our
midst. The true method of diminishing crime is to
pluck it up by the roots. And the only way to pluck
it up by the roots is to alleviate the social disorders
by which it is produced,"
With regard to our own system, into which Deter-
rence enters so largely, we are beginning to recognize
its failure. If the fear of penalties deters a certain
number who have never been in prison, how does it
act on those who have been there ? Recidivism is the
answer — they come back again. The Report of 1895
quotes figures which show conclusively that the
PENAL SYSTEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 15
more often a man has been in prison, the more likely
he is to return there. Of every hundred who go to
prison a first time, thirty return again ; but of every
hundred who have been to prison five times, seventy-
nine return again.' This does not look as if existing
prison methods were largely curative. In fact, our
system does not create citizens, but rather habitual
criminals. It lays itself out to terrorize rather than
to reclaim, and this is the result.
For habit robs even prisons of their terror. How-
ever severe a system may be it at last breeds its own
type of prisoner who is adapted to his environment.
If you live seven years without speaking or using
your brain and heart to any appreciable degree, you
at last lose the need for speech and thought and
affection. The privation is no longer a punishment.
Not long ago there was in Sheffield a man who had
been forty-two years in prison. He had been con-
victed of some violence in the early days of Trade-
unions. He was now sixty-three — a tall, gaunt, and
still powerful man, with the broad arrow marked on
the back of his hands (a practice forty years ago).
He had come back to the world, but he had no in-
terest in it. He seemed utterly callous. Though he
had been a trade-union enthusiast in his time, he
took no interest whatever in the labour struggles of
to-day, or in anything else that was going on. Yet
he openly said that if anyone wanted a " rough job "
doing, he would do it. Then he would get back to
prison — and he would as soon be there as anywhere
else. That man was completely adapted to his
prison-environment.
He was the perfected result
of prison influences during the last forty or fifty
years.
Things are improving doubtless ; but it is obvious
that a system which is merely or mainly one of
Deterrence must turn out such types. " Will a pro-
longed course of severities and degradations," says
Morrison " confer the virtues of industrious and
orderly citizens on these unhappy men ? On the con-
trary, the more harshly you punish them, the more
yon reduce the human element which still lives
in their hearts. The more you punish them, the
more certainly you doom them to the awful exist-
ence of a habitual criminal."
It is the habitual criminal who is the bugbear of our
modem civihsation, and notwithstanding our sys-
tematic starvation of both his body and his mind
his proportions remain as alarming as ever ! Michael
Davitt, in an excellent letter to the Daily Chronicle
at the time of the shooting of the escaping convict
Carter, said : " All such reasoning and arguments
[in the direction of Reclamation and humanity], are
I know, thrown away upon those who believe only
in the efficacy of the stem and undeviating practice
of intimidation towards those criminals who have
forfeited to the law for a time the ordinary claims
and considerations of citizenship. Advocates of
more humanizing methods of prison discipline are but
the votaries of a misplaced sentimentality with such
critics, and this closes the case in favour of the ex-
isting system of punishing malefactors. But the
case is by no means closed in this off-hand way.
There are other sides to the question, the most serious
side being the steady growth of recidivists under
the fostering influence of a purely intimidatory
and non-reformative prison law and administration.
All the sneers in the armoury of ofi&cial criticism at
meddlesome reformers cannot dispose of this damni-
fying evidence against the failure of the existing
system to reform the criminal,
"The reason of this failure is not far to seek. All
individuality is mercilessly suppressed in the pri-
soner. No prisoner is allowed to do anything except
with the permission and in sight of a warder. He
is the object of constant and ceaseless vigilance from
sentence to Uberation. He is closely watched when
at prayers in chapel. He is under the warder's eye
while in his cell, and is never for a second lost sight
of while at work. He is made to feel in every parti-
cular of his routine life of silence and labour that he
is treated, not as a man, but as a mere disciplined
human automaton. To possess a will or to attempt
to exercise it even in some praiseworthy or harmless
manner — as, for instance, to share a piece of bread
with a more hungry fellow-unfortimate — is to com-
mit a breach of the prison rules. The human will
must be left outside of the prison gates, where it is
to be picked up again five, seven or fifteen years
afterwards, and refitted to the mental conditions
which penal servitude has created in the animalized
machine which is discharged from custody. All
initiative has been enervated under a remorseless
discipline, and a man weak in mental and moral
balance at best is turned out into a cold, repelling
and pitiless world, crippled in all those qualities
! self-reliance which are the essential needs of a
creature destitute of friends, and liable to be a prey
to the ticket-of-leave hunters of the law. The
system which reduces a man to a condition of moral
helplessness of this kind may be scientific, ' just,'
punitive, and all the rest ; but it is not, and cannot
possibly be, reformative, any more than it can be
merciful, Christian, or considerate.
" It is not in the nature of things human to expect
sentient, reflective beings, no matter how degraded
by crime, to be cured of their moral maladies through
the media of inhuman submission, or to be deeply
impressed with respect for a law which penalizes
almost every natural faculty in a prisoner in re-
taliation for his offence against society. Working
on such lines, on the lines of greatest resistance, it is
no wonder that penal servitude is a fruitful nursery
of recidivism and a patent instance of expensive
failure."
Sir Godfrey Lushington lends the weight of his
authority to the same views. He says (as quoted by
the Report of 1895), " I regard as unfavourable to
reformation the status of a prisoner throughout his
whole career ; the crushing of self-respect, the starv-
ing of all moral instinct he may possess, the absence
of all opportimity to do or receive a kindness, the
continual association with none but criminals, and
that only as a separate item amongst other items
also separate ; the forced labour, and the denial of
all liberty, I beUeve the true mode of reforming a
man or restoring him to society is exactly in the
opposite direction of all these ; but of course this "
a mere idea."
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