The Press. — London, England, 1856-10-25 00:00:00

W2B was informed that " the power of altering the licence of a convict will most certainly be exercised in case of miscon duct. If, therefore, he wishes to retain the privilege which by his good behaviour under penal discipline he has ob tained, he muut prove by his subsequent conduct that he is really worthy of her Majesty's clemency." Thus it appears that due notice is given to every ticket-of leave man that any clear manifestation that lie does not mean to follow a sober, honest, and industrious clurse will con• sign him again to prison, such manifestation being taken as proof that when he left gaol he was not in a lit state to be discharged. The hon. recorder had not much faith in the statistical returns given of relapsed ticket of leave men. There was great difficulty in attaining any degree of accuracy in such a return : At the beginning of the present year, judging from data which I have laid before the committee in my evidence, and which have never been impugned, there must have been, as I calculate, eighty ticket•of•leave men at the least in Birmingham. I asked your chief superintendent for a list of ail that could be found. He and his subordinate officer exerted themselves to comply with my request. After six weeks of inquiry and observation they presented me with the names of nineteen prisoners only, stating that there were many others whom they suspected to belong to this class, but of whom they hat no specific knowledge. Of the nineteen further information disclosed an error as to five. These nail never held tickets of leave, but had left their prisons upon unconditional discharges. I subse quently found that the police at Bristol were in a like state of doubt with regard to the criminal population of that city. Hence it follows that relapsed ticket•of•leave men as well as other convicts often succeed in imposing themselves on courts as appearing at the bar for the first time ; and thus it becomes impossible to distinguish, with any degree of accuracy, between the number of those on whom training has been effectual and those on whom it has failed. Nevertheless, he believed that the conduct of a large number of the class was good, and that many who relapsed fell from the reluctance of employers to give employment to such men. Now this reluctance he hoped soon to see overcome. But to attain this much improvement was required in our system of training prisoners : I have spoken, gentlemen, of the necessity for passing the criminal, or.rather for enabling him to pass himself through progressive stages of improvement. The sound• noes of this principle is indeed recognised, and to a certain limited extent is now in action ; and, so far as the gaol au thorities have brought it into use, it is highly beneficial. But the stages are not sufficiently numerous, and—what is a much greater defect—the convict does not win his way through them by dint of exertion. The right to pass on wards is gained by his remaining in each a given time. Such period, it is true, may be lengthened by signal miscon duct on his part, but that is little to the purpose. Gentle men, what I desire to see is that the convict should never be able to pass through a stage merely by conformity to rules fir a certain number of months, weeks, or days, but that he should be held to proof that he has made a substan tial advance towards reformation. Apply the proper test to his conduct, and then let him pass as quickly as he can. The defect of our present prison system lay in the imperfect practice of the theory, arising from a want of confidence in the possibility of thoroughly reform ing a convict by any treatment of which he is sus ceptible while confined in prison. Discharge on ticket of leave was given when the convict had en dured a certain fraction cf his punishment as measured by time, unless in excepted cases of flsgrant misconduct, when he was detained for a longer period:— Now, it was proved before the committee that the number of such excepted cases is very small, and that the extra detention is very short. Hut I put it to your common sense, gentlemen, whether such could be the operation of the measure if the convicts did in truth work themselves out of prison. Is it not self evident that con• victs commencing their imprisonment together would on that supposition no more depart on the same day from the prison gates than the horses starting together at a race will all at the same moment reach the winning post ? Here, then, is a need for improvement which demands the anxious attention of all who have the fate of the criminal class under their control. For, if it be manifestly unjust to the public to permit criminals whose sentences have not expired to return into society unreformed I hold it to be no less mischievous to the criminals themselves. Sir George Grey last session had stated why a ticket of leave cannot fairly be regarded as a proof of re.damation. "So long as a man is im inured in prison, where ho is denied the opportunity of getting drunk and of associating with those who might lead him into temptation, he is evidently sc cirounstanced that it is impossible for him to afford us the means of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion as to whether his repentance is genuine or affected." This proposition thus enunciated was as undeniably true as it was clearly and forcibly expressed. Yet Mr. Hill was not prepared to accept the practical conclusion in favour of discharging unreformed Because with the information derived from the evidence taken by the committee of the excellent results which have followed a judicious relaxation in the restraints upon con• victs luring the latter ►tages of reformatory discipline 1 cannot admit it to be a necessary condition of prison life that the will of the convict should be kept in that state of slavish repression which is here assumed. Gentlemen, the question which I am now examining underlies the THE PRESS. whole theory of reformatory discipline. Even that amend. ment, imperfect as it is, which the stimulus afforded by the ticket.ofleave system has effected is wrought out by a certain small measure of free action conceded to the prisoner. The punishment which is inflicted upon him for gross misconduct in gaol shows that he is held to have had it in his power to choose between right and wrong; and it is merely a careful and well•graduated enforcement of this principle which is required to accomplish all at which we aim. Personal reformation, as the term itself implies, is the acquisition of some faculty of action or endurance not possessed before. But every one of our acquirements is made by the repetition of efforts, the large majority of which are often unsuccessful. Gentlemen, we neurally shrink from exposing a man who has shown his weakness, by the fact of his becoming a convict, to any temptation while he remains under our protection and control. But this disposition, however laudable, must be overcome. We must reflect that it is not in our power, except by imprisoning him for life, to guard him against the host of temptations which will throng upon him the moment he sets foot beyond the prison walls. Is it not, then, more than permissible—is it not our duty, to train him to bear the shock of these temptations while we are able at once to subject him to a renewed course of pre paration, if, upon experiment, he is found incapable of en• countering his danger in the mitigated form in which it will be presented to him? DISCHARGED PRISONERS' AID SOCIETY. In THE PRESS of Saturday we gave, by telegraph, a sketch of the important proceedings which occurred at a great meeting held in Birmingham on the pre ceding Friday night, in support of the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society. The object of the institution was thus set forth in the report of the society:— To aid prisoners on their discharge from gaol, by pro curing lodgings for such of them as may be selected by the Committee of Recommendation, furnishing temporary maintenance, in ease of need, to individuals seeking em ployment, assisting them in obtaining work or in returning to their homes, and subsequently exercising a friendly superintendence over them. The RECORDER of BIRMINGHAM (Mr. M. D. Hill, Q.C.), after the report had been read, moved its adoption. He said : I cannot but express my deep regret at the absence of Lord Stanley, a young man of whose future eminence in the State his countrymen have formed the most sanguine expectations. My task has, however, been very much shortened by the admirable report you have just heard. This has presented the facts in detail, and these facts must have struck you all, first, with the magnitude of the want to be supplied, and next, with the hope—the humble hope, but still the hope—that at last we have found the true way to the diminution and repression of crime. It is indeed humiliating to all who are concerned in the administration of justice that all the I.bours of our judges, magistrates, juries, and police—all that machinery by which so many of our fellow-creatures are brought every month to the crimi nal !ear—only result in this, that after the convict is found guilty, and punished according to law; after all that has been done for him by the exhortations and earnest suppli cations in his favour by the chaplains of our gaols ; after all the lessons of the schoolmaster, and the still more im• portant lesson derived from the pain which he endured from the consequences which he felt to have resulted from his crime upon himself, when the doors o 1 the prison were opened a vast proportion of those who have suffered the consequences of their guilt quickly—how quickly—return again to their miserable course of lite. How many thus fall back I cannot tell you. It has been ascertained by care ful observation that at least 33 per cent. of those who have been convicted come again to the criminal bar; but al though we know that 33 per cent. come again, yet when we recollect that there are many who conceal the fact of previous conviction, and who when they go to places where they are unknown are not discovered, we may well believe that probabilities point to a still more lamentable pro portion. What, then, was to be done but to offer encourage ment, to give a friendly countenance, to the prisoner• upon his discharge from prison : We have heard that the tempter is to be found at the gaol door, that the receiver of stolen goods takes his place there, that the criminal's old companions in sin and crime wait to carry him away to his former haunts, and to embark him again in the fearful course from which he hsd been a short time held back by the strong arm of the law. My hearers should disperse that wretched congregation as• sembled around the prison gates, and hold out to the dis. charged prisoner a hand of encouragement. If you can do nothing else, you can give him a friendly countenance. Let him feel that when he has to encounter (as encounter he must) the scorn of the world, one human being at least will be his friend—will rejoice if he can resist temptation and escape its dangers, and will mourn if he should re• lapse again into the paths of sin. This system had been tried at Birmingham with young offenders who had been permitted to be re ceived by their l'riends at home on the request of the prosecutor, and out of 483 such cases in the last seventeen years, only 78 had ever beendetected at the bar again. In conclusion, the learned recorder observed:— Such is the prevalence of crime that it is scarcely possible for any person not to be allied by ties of blood, friendship, or acquaintatce at least with some family in whinh these is not a fallen member. I ask you, if you can do no more, to fix upon some one individual—watch his trial, learn the SATURDAY, extent and duration of his punishment, inform yourselves of his conduct during his imprisonment, exht.rt him to apply humbly, but with stedfast resolution, to the greet task of self reformation, to provide for him if you can a home and employment on his departure from pristin, and, if )ou can do no more, attend on the morning of his re. lease, forming as it were a bodyguard against the tempters who infest the prison gates. I trust that you will nut b satisfied with manifesting those feelings, but that you w•il let these feelings fructify into good acts. If you do so you will have your reward. You will not, it is true, be one penny richer during the whole of your lives for your exer tions and your sacrifices—you will gather, perhaps, no fame—your names will possibly never extend beyond your nntive quarter—yet you will have your "exceeding great reward "—the consciousness of having done right, and of having ob.led the command; of your I )ivine Master—Him who uttered the immortal words, " Do unto others even as you would that others should do unto you. Lord LYTTELTON seconded the resolution. The noble lord referred to the repugnance generally en tertained in this country to the employment of con victs, and observed that a great point would be Imined if criminals could obtain some degree of recom mendation during their incarceration in prison, and by this movement be enabled to obtain situations which it would have been impossible for them other wise to secure. The recent changes in the criminal law necessitated the support of such institutions as the present. He also expressed a hope that similar institutions would be established elsewhere, and in timated that in his own county (Worcestershire) a association of the kind had been in operation for some years, and had effected considerable good. It was, however, on a very modest scale, but he hoped that an impetus would be given to it by the present movement. The RECORDER of LONDON moved the next resolu tion—" That the inhubitants and employers of the borough be asked to co operate in the work." The question was, what is to be done with the prisoner on leaving prison ? It is not, as I understand, proposed by this society to afford permanent relief, nor to provide workshops, nor to give more pecuniary aid than is absolutely necessary ; but the object is to lay hold of the man at the very moment of his quitting gaol, and when his nature is most impressible hold out the band of friendship, "to com fort the weakhearted, and raise them that fall." This society could not deal with the hardened offender or the habitual thief; they must be left to other reformatories; but its efforts must be directed to that unfortunate class who were led into temptation by the weakness of human nature Sir JOHN PAKINGTON, M.P., seconded the resolu tion. Ile said : I hardly know any other object of charity which can be recommended upon stronger grounds than the object for which we are now assembled. My noble friend Lord Lyttelton has reminded us of one reason why this society should be supported, but in my opinion an inferior reason —I mean the recent changes in the criminal law with respect to transportation. Undoubtedly, these changes in the law compel us to retain a large amount of criminals in this country; and therefore, upon the lowest ground,that of self interest as citizens, it is woith our while to redeem every criminal. But l would urge upon the public of this country the principle adopted by this society upon higher and far holier grounds, because I know of no mode of Christian benevolence which so well deserves the name of charity—because I know of no object of compassion more entitled to our sympathy and assistance than the man who, having been incarcerated in prison for perhaps his first offence—for comparatively a trivial offence—finds himself at the door of that prison once more a free citizen, but tainted in character, destitute in circumstances, and feeling that it is only by relapsing into crime that he can prolong his miserable existence. Not only is no act of charity more praiseworthy than the extension of a friendly band to that poor man, but it is a part of that duty which we owe to our neighbours, our country, and our God. I know of no dictum which is ao frequently maintained in society, with such perfect belief on the part of those who maintain it, as that any attempt to reform adult criminels will be absolutely useless. So far as I have been able to form an opinion, I repudiate the idea as utterly false and worthless. What is the position of those who are brought to the bar of justice for crime? They vary according to fluctuating circumstances, but all have yielded to tempta tion. Where is the man in this hall who can lift hie hand and say he has never yielded to temptation ? Where would you draw the line? Why is the man who has ever come within the grasp of the law to he foe ever excluded from the hopes of redemption any more than any one of you? Experience is better than opinion. Lord Lyttelton has adverted to the fact that in the county of Worcester they have had a society established for kindred purposes. From a report presented at the annual meeting of that society it appears that, since its establishment in 1640, 228 prisoners have been relieved, of whom 11 have been recommitted to prison, and there is reason to believe that the remaining 217 have reformed their habits and turned from their evil courses. It is gratif ) ing to know for a cer tainty that many of that number have become useful and valuable members of society. My noble friend has truly said that the society was modest; but for sixteen years it has been struggling on, almost the only one of its kind in England, for in this, as in other matters, we have been lagging behind the rest of the world. The United States have done much, France has done much, Prussia has done much, and even Italy, upon whom in our insular pride we are accustomed to look down in contempt, has set us an example which we are at last willing to follow. In Glou cester a similar association has been established, and, as r