from afar, the danger of political change,are sensible that the correction of one abuse may lead to that of another—feel uneasy at any visible operation of public spirit and justice-hate and tremble at a man who exposes and rectifies abuses from a sense of duty—and think, if such things are suffered to be, that their candle-ends and cheeseparings are no longer safe: and these sagacious persons, it must be said for them, are not very wrong in this feeling. Providence, which has denied to them all that is great and good, has given them a fine tact for the preservation of their plunder: their real enemy is the spirit of inquiry-the dislike of wrong-the love of right-and the courage and diligence which are the concomitants of these virtues. When once this spirit is up, it may be as well directed to one abuse as another. To say you must not torture a prisoner with bad air and bad food, and to say you must not tax me without my consent, or that of my representative, are both emanations of the same principle, occurring to the same sort of understanding, congenial to the same disposition, published, protected, and enforced by the same qualities. This it is that really excites the horror against Mrs. Fry, Mr. Gurney, Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Buxton. Alarmists such as we have described have no particular wish that prisons should be dirty, jailers cruel, or prisoners, wretched; they care little about such matters either way; but all their malice and meanness is called up into action when they see secrets brought to light, and abuses giving way before the diffusion of intelligence, and the aroused feelings of justice and compassion. As for us, we have neither love of change, nor fear of it; but a love of what is just and wise, as far as we are able to find it out. In this spirit we shall offer a few observations upon prisons, and upon the publications before us. should be committed all persons accused of capital offences, whose trials would come on at the Assizes; to the house of correction, all offenders whose cases would be cognizable at the Quarter-sessions. Sentence of imprisonment in the house of correction, after trial, should carry with it hard labour; sentence of imprisonment in the jail, after trial, should imply an exemption from compulsory labour. There should be no compulsory labour in jails-only in houses of correction. In using the terms Jail and House of Correction, we should always attend to these distinctions. Prisoners for trial should not only not be compelled to labour, but they should have every indulgence shown to them compatible with safety. No chains-much better diet than they commonly have-all possible access to their friends and relations — and means of earning money if they choose it. The broad and obvious distinction between prisoners before and after trial should constantly be attended to; to violate it is gross tyranny and cruelty. The jails for men and women should be so far separated, that nothing could be seen or heard from one to the other. The men should be divided into two classes: 1st, those who are not yet tried; 2dly, those who are tried and convicted. The first class should be divided into those who are accused as misdemeanants and as felons; and each of these into first misdemeanants and second misdemeanants, men of better and worse character; and the same with felons. The second class should be divided into, 1st, persons condemned to death; 2dly, persons condemned for transportation; 3dly, first class confined, or men of the best character under sentence of confinement; 4thly, second confined, or men of worse character under sentence of confinement. To these are to be added separate places for king's evidence, boys, lunatics, and places for the first reception of prisoners, before they can be examined and classed:-a chapel, hospital. yards, and workshops for such as are willing to work. The new law should keep up the distinction between Jails and Houses of Correction. One of each should exist in every county, either at a distance from each other, or in such a state of juxtaposition that they might be under the same governor. To the jail † follows: The classifications in jails will then be as Boys. Prisoners on their first reception. And the same divisions for Women. But there is a division still more important than any of these; and that is a division into much smaller numbers than are gathered together in prisons:-40, 50, and even 70 and 80 felons, are often placed together in one yard, and live together for months previous to their trial. Any classification of offences, while there is such a multitude living together of one class, is perfectly nugatory and ridiculous; no character can escape from corruption and extreme vice in such a school. The law ought to be peremptory against the confinement of more than fifteen persons together of the same class. Unless some measure of this kind is resorted to, all reformation in prisons is impossible.' A very great, and a very neglected object in prisons, is Diet. There should be, in every jail and house of correction, four sorts of diet: 1st, Bread and water; 2dly, Common prison diet, to be settled by the magistrates; 3dly, Best prison diet, to be settled by ditto; 4thly, Free diet, from which spirituous liquors altogether, and fermented liquors in excess, are excluded. All prisoners before trial should be allowed best prison diet, and be upon free diet, if they could afford it. Every sentence for imprisonment should expressly mention to which diet the prisoner is confined; and no other diet should be, on any account, allowed to such prisoner after his sentence. Nothing can be so preposterous, and criminally careless, as the way in which * * We should much prefer solitary imprisonment; but are at present speaking of the regulations in jails where that system is excluded. persons confined upon sentence are suffered to live in prisons. Misdemeanants, who have money in their pockets, may be seen in many of our prisons with fish, buttered veal, rump steaks, and every kind of luxury; and as the practice prevails of allowing them to purchase a pint of ale each, the rich prisoner purchases many pints of ale in the name of his poorer brethren, and drinks them himself. A jail should be a place of punishment, from which men recoil with horror -a place of real suffering painful to the memory, terrible to the imagination; but if men can live idly, and live luxuriously, in a clean, well-aired, well-warmed, spacious habitation, is it any wonder that they set the law at defiance, and brave that magistrate who restores them to their former luxury and ease? There are a set of men well known to jailers, called Family-men, who are constantly returning to jail, and who may be said to spend the greater part of their life there,-up to the time when they are hanged. Minutes of Evidence taken before Select Committee on Gaols. 'Mr. WILLIAM BEEBY, Keeper of the New Clerkenwell Prison. - Have you many prisoners that return to you on re-commitment? A vast number; some of them are frequently discharged in the morning, and I have them back again in the evening; or they have been discharged in the evening, and I have had them back again in the morning.'- Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 278. FRANCIS CONST, Esq., Chairman of the Middle-Has that opinion been consex Quarter-sessions. firmed by any conduct you have observed in prisoners that have come before you for trial? I only judge from the opposite thing, that, going into a place where they can be idle, and well pro tected from any inconveniences of the weather, and other things that poverty is open to, they are not amended at all; they laugh at it frequently, and desire to go to the House of Correction. Once or twice, in the early part of the winter, upon sending a prisoner for two months, he has asked whether he could not stay longer, or words to that effect. It is an insulting way of saying they like it.'Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 285. The fact is, that a thief is a very dainty gentleman. Male parta cito dilabuntur. He suffering, that the laws of their country are not to be broken with impunity.' As the diet, according to our plan, is always to be a part of the sentence, a Judge offence for which the prisoner is committed, as well as the quality of the prisoner: and we have before stated, that all prisoners, before trial, should be upon the best prison diet, and unrestricted as to what they could purchase, always avoiding intemperance. does not rob to lead a life of mortification and self-denial. The difficulty of controlling his appetites, in all probability, first led him to expenses, which made him a thief to support them. Having lost cha-will, of course, consider the nature of the racter, and become desperate, he orders crab and lobster and veal cutlets at a public house, while a poor labourer is refreshing himself with bread and cheese. The most vulnerable part of a thief is his belly; and there is nothing he feels more bitterly in confinement than a long course of water-gruel and flourpuddings. It is a mere mockery of punishment to say, that such a man shall spend his money in luxurious viands, and sit down to dinner with fetters on his feet, and fried pork in his stomach. Restriction to diet in prisons is still more necessary, when it is remembered that it is impossible to avoid making a prison, in some respects, more eligible than the home of a culprit. It is almost always more spacious, cleaner, better ventilated, better warmed. All these advantages are inevitable on the side of the prison. The means, therefore, that remain of making a prison a disagreeable place, are not to be neglected; and of these, none are more powerful than the regulation of diet. If this be neglected, the meaning of sentencing a man to prison will be this-and it had better be put in these words 'Prisoner at the Bar, you are fairly convicted by a jury of your country, of having feloniously stolen two pigs, the property of Stephen Muck, farmer. The Court having taken into consideration the frequency and enormity of this offence, and the necessity of restraining it with the utmost severity of punishment, do order and adjudge that you be confined for six months in a house larger, better, better aired, and warmer than your own, in company with 20 or 30 young persons in as good health and spirits as yourself. You need do no work; and you may have any thing for breakfast, dinner, and supper, you can buy. In passing this sentence, the Court hope that your example will be a warning to others; and that evildisposed persons will perceive, from your These gradations of diet being fixed in all prisons, and these definitions of Jail and House of Correction being adhered to, the punishment of imprisonment may be apportioned with the greatest nicety either by the statute, or at the discretion of the Judge, if the law chooses to give him that discretion. There will be Imprisonment for different degrees of time. Imprisonment solitary, or in company, or in darkness. In jails without labour. In houses of correction with labour. water. Imprisonment with common prison diet. We Every sentence of the Judge should state diet, as well as light or darkness, time, place, solitude, society, labour or ease; and we are strongly of opinion, that the punishment in prisons should be sharp and short. would, in most cases, give as much of solitary confinement as would not injure men's minds, and as much of bread and water diet as would not injure their bodies. A return to prison should be contemplated with horror - horror, not excited by the ancient filth, disease, and extortion of jails; but by calm, well-regulated, well-watched austerity-by the gloom and sadness wisely and intentionally thrown over such an abode. Six weeks of such sort of imprisonment would be much more efficacious than as many months of jolly company and veal cutlets. It appears, by The Times newspaper of the 24th of June, 1821, that two persons, a man and his wife, were committed at the Surrey Sessions for three years. If this county jail is bad, to three years of idleness and good living-if it is a manufacturing jail, to three years of regular labour, moderate living, and accumulated gains. They are committed principally for a warning to others, partly for their own good. Would not these ends have been much more effectually answered, if they had been committed, for nine months, to solitary cells upon bread and water; the first and last month in dark cells? If this is too severe, then lessen the duration still more, and give them more light days, and fewer dark ones; but we are convinced the whole good sought may be better obtained in much shorter periods than are now resorted to. For the purpose of making jails disagreeable, the prisoners should remain perfectly alone all night, if it is not thought proper to render their confinement entirely solitary during the whole period of their imprisonment. Prisoners dislike this- and therefore it should be done; it would make their residence in jails more disagreeable, and render them unwilling to return there. At present, eight or ten women sleep in a room with a good fire, pass the night in sound sleep or pleasant conversation; and this is called confinement in a prison. A prison is a place where men, after trial and sentence, should be made unhappy by public lawful enactments, not so severe as to injure the soundness of mind or body. If this be not done, prisons are a mere invitation to the lower classes to wade, through felony and larceny, to better accommodations than they can procure at home. And here, as it appears to us, is the mistake of the many excellent men who busy themselves (and wisely and humanely busy themselves) about prisons. Their first object seems to be the reformation of the prisoners, not the reformation of the public; whereas the first object should be, the discomfort and discontent of their prisoners; that they should become a warning, feel unhappy, and resolve never so to act again as to put themselves in the same predicament; and then as much reformation as is compatible with this, the better. If a man say to himself, 'This prison is a comfortable place,' while he says to the chaplain or the visitor that he will come there no more, we confess we have no great confidence in his public declaration; but if he say, 'This is a place of misery and sorrow, you shall not catch me here again,' there is much reason to believe he will be as good as his word; and he then becomes (which is of much more consequence than his own reformation) a warning to others. Hence it is we object to that spectacle of order and decorum — carpenters in one shop, tailors in another, weavers in a third, sitting down to a meal by ring of bell, and receiving a regular portion of their earnings. We are afraid it is better than real life on the other side of the wall, or so very little worse that nobody will have any fear to encounter it. In Bury jail, which is considered as a pattern jail, the prisoners under a sentence of confinement are allowed to spend their weekly earnings (two, three, and four shillings per week) in fish, tobacco, and vegetables; so states the jailer in his examination before the House of Commons and we have no doubt it is well meant; but is it punishment? We were most struck, in reading the evidence of the Jail Committee before the House of Commons, with the opinions of the jailer of the Devizes jail, and with the practice of the Magistrates who superintend it.* 'Mr. T. BRUTTON, Governor of the Gaol at Devizes. Does this confinement in solitude make prisoners more averse to return to prison? I think it does. Does it make a strong impression upon them? I have no doubt of it.-Does it make them more obedient and orderly while in gaol? I have effectual punishment you can make use of? I do. no doubt it does. Do you consider it the most - Do you think it has a greater effect upon the minds of prisoners than any apprehensions of per The Winchester and Devizes jails seem to us to be conducted upon better principles than any other, though even these are by no means what jails should be. sonal punishment? I have no doubt of it. - Have you any dark cells for the punishment of refractory prisoners? I have. - Do you find it necessary occasionally to use them? Very seldom. - Have you, in any instance, been obliged to use the dark cell, in the case of the same prisoner, twice? Only on one occasion, I think. — What length of time is it necessary to confine a refractory prisoner to bring him to his senses? Less than one day. - Do you think it essential, for the purpose of keeping up the discipline of the prison, that you should have it in your power to have recourse to the punishment of dark cells? I do; I consider punishment in a dark cell for one day has a greater effect upon a prisoner than to keep him on bread and water for a month.'- Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, p.359. The evidence of the Governor of Gloucester jail is to the same effect. Mr. THOMAS CUNNINGHAM, Keeper of Gloucester Gaol.-Do you attribute the want of those certificates entirely to the neglect of enforcing the means of solitary confinement? I do most certainly. Sometimes, where a certificate has not been granted, and a prisoner has brought a certificate of good behaviour for one year, Sir George and the Committee ordered one pound or a guinea from the charity.— Does that arise from your apprehension that the prisoners have not been equally reformed, or only from the want of the means of ascertaining such reformation? It is for want of not knowing; and we cannot ascertain it, from their working in numbers. -They may be reformed? Yes: but we have not the means of ascertaining it. There is one thing I do which is not provided by the rules, and which is the only thing in which I deviate from the rules. When a man is committed for a month, I never give him any work; he sits in solitude, and walks in the yard by himself for air; he has no other food but his bread and water, except twice a week a pint of peas soup. I never knew an instance of a man coming in a second time, who had been committed for a month. I have done that for these seventeen or eighteen years. What has been the result? They dread so much coming in again. If a man is committed for six weeks, we give him work. Do you apprehend that solitary confinement for a month, without employment, is the most beneficial means of working reform? I conceive it is. Can it operate as the means of reform, any more than it operates as a system of punishment? It is only for small offences they commit for a month. Would not the same effect be produced by corporal punishment? Corporal punishment may be absolutely necessary sometimes: but I do not think corporal punishment would reform them so much as solitary confinement. - Would - not severe corporal punishment have the same effect? No, it would harden them more than any thing else. - Do you think benefit is derived from the opportunity of reflection afforded by solitary confinement? Yes. -And very low diet also? Yes.'- Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 391. We must quote also the evidence of the Governor of Horsley jail. 'Mr. WILLIAM STOKES, Governor of the House of Correction at Horsley.— Do you observe any difference in the conduct of prisoners who are employed, and those who have no employment? Yes, a good deal; I look upon it, from what judgment I can form, and I have been a long while in it, that to take a prisoner and discipline him according to the rules as the law allows, and if he have no work, that that man goes through more punishment in one month than a man who is employed, and receives a portion of his labour three months; but still I should like to have employment, because a great number of times I took men away, who had been in the habit of earning sixpence a week to buy a loaf, and put them in solitary confinement; and the punishment is a great deal more without work.. Which of the prisoners, those that have been employed, or those unemployed, do you think would go out of the prison the better men? I think, that let me have a prisoner, and I never treat any one with severity, any further than that they should be obedient, and to let them see that I will do my duty, I have reason to believe, that, if a prisoner is committed under my care, or any other man's care, to a house of correction, and he has to go under the discipline of the law, if he is in for the value of a month or six weeks, that man is in a great deal better state than though he stays for six months; he gets hardened by being in so long, from one month to another. You are speaking now of solitude without labour; do you think he would go out better, if he had been employed during the month you speak of? No, nor half; because I never task those people, in order that they should not say I force them to do more than they are able, that they should not slight it; for if they perform any thing in the bounds of reason, I never find fault with them: the prisoner who is employed, his time passes smooth and comfortable, and he has a proportion of his earnings, and he can buy additional diet; but if he has no labour, and kept under the discipline of the prison, it is a tight piece of punishment to go through. Which of the two should you think most likely to return immediately to habits of labour on their own account? The dispositions of all men are not alike; but my opinion is this, if they are kept and disciplined according to the rules of the prison, and |
