The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-10-14 00:00:00

Ely cstottrhage ehstrber.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1871.

THE REPRESSION OF CRUM.

The Social Science Congress does well to
devote much of its attention to' the important
subject of the repression of crime. Criminals
of various grades we have always with us, and
by far the larger proportion of crime is that
against property, lite criminals almost as a
rule live on society. We have annually some
80,000 persons passing through our priseus sen-
tenced to short terms of incarceration, besides
a very large number condemned to longer terms
of " clunuace vile.- Considerably more than
half of the entire number may be said to main-
tain themselves, or be maintained by the coon-
try—in the one case case by depredation, and in
the other by funds which society is compelled to
raise for the support of the depredator. This
double infliction on the public lasts, so far as
iudividual criminals are concerned during vary-
ing portions of their lives : but the double bur-
den of the dishonest on the honest is permanent.
Where efforts are made—and they are made in
most of our prisons to a greater or less extent—
to employ the prisoners profitably, the almost
invariable result is that prison labour competes
unfairly with honest labour outside. A man,
we will say, is sentenced to twelve months im-
prisonment. He must be maintaiued during
that time, and anything he can earn lessens the
cost of his maintenance. Apply this fact to the
inmates of our prisons generally, and it will at
once be seen that the employers of prison la-
bour can undersell the honest workmen who has
himself and others to keep. The judicious em- '
ployment of prisoners is a yet unsolved problem,
and it would be well if the Social Science Con-
gress would devote attention to this branch of a
great subject. Meanwhile, papers have been
read at its sittings which offer sonic noteworthy '
considerations. Mr. Serjeant Pulling maintains
that punishment to be efficacious must conic as'
a certain consequence of doing wrong—not de-
pending on volunteer prosecutions or unskilled
and capricious magistrates, but following inevit-
ably, as far as human calculation permits, on the
hee!ii of crime. Such a state of things is cer-
tainly much to be desired, but a great deal has
to he achieved before this certainty of punish•
ment can be arrived at. Under our present
system prosecutors, or would-be prosecutors, are
very unfairly treated. They are robbed or mal-
treated in the first instance, and then have to
endure loss of aine and money, not in obtaining
redress, bat in punishing au offender in whose
conviction society at large is interested. The
se— plain. The prosecution of crime, like
its • ishment, should be at chi national charge.
we have pucnic prosecutors appointed a
large amount of crime will be committed with
impunity. The system of au unpaid magistracy
is also, we think, a faulty one, to call on men
to administer the law who do not understand it,
and who can only assume a wisdom they do not
possess by referring to a clerk or to a legal hand-
book, is an erroneous system of jurisprudence,
which is, we believe, peculiar to this country.
Mr. T. B. Le Baker, whose name is already
well-known in connection with our modes of
punishment for crime, refers to a plan proposed
by the Gloucestershire justice, the object of
Which is net so mach retaliation for a particular
offence as the prevention of future crone. 'file
main feature of the system may be said to be
alight punishment for a first offence, witia sn

intims•lon that a I y posit v would follow the
ot .1 second. He urges that six
months' impels() 1111 l ent, with seven years' police
I supervision, is a far better protection to society
than a sentence of one or two years incarcera-
tion, and that a sentence of two or three months
is has preventive of future crime than one elf
ten days with a knowledge that "six months im-
prisonment will come next time.- Excepting,
perhaps, the lengthy term of police supervision,
the semen) seems nt least deserving of trial.
Mr. liallour Browne, however, maintains on the
contrary that it is only the first plunge into
prison life that is terrible. He asserte, whet is
only well-known, that our present system does
not prevent a relapse into crime; and he pro-
poses a system of fine in eoujanction with im-
prisonments, that is to say, that the criminal
Alloild pay pecuniarily for his Offences, by being
compelled ta do that laleour for which he is best
sited. Prison chaplains, he says, have failed ;
let us have prison bankers. Mr. Browne thinks
a prisoner, as a rule, should be made to earn
sufficient to recompense the Slide for the whole
expenses of his detention in prison ; that after
this his earnings should go towards the support
of those who were previous to his imprisonment
dependent on his exertions ; sod, further, that
the prisoner should have to earn a certain sum,
to be saved up as a fine which should be the
measure of his punishment. The fine being
fully earned would be handed to the prisoner,
who would have a fresh start with a little capital.
This, we believe, is I initv a novel idea. To
make a prisoner maintain himself, or partially
so, is a system long since adopted, but to com-
pel him to pay for his own maintenance, support
his own family outside, and then still work on
to raise a little capital for himself, is not only
novel but rather startling. Mr. Browne, how-
ever, probably only pushes a good idea too far.
The enormous expense of our prisons and priso-
n( rs is a heavy burden on the community ; and
what many prisoners hate and detest is work.
If, therefore, we can make this work at once a
punishment to the dishouest lend a ineans of les-
sening the burdens of the honest, it would be a
I grand point gained. There would be many dif-
ficulties in carrying out such a system, ated of
course not only the offence itself but the position '
and connections of the offender would have to
be carefully studied, so that there should not be
too great a disproportion between various terms I
ef punishment for the same crime. In feet, the ,
uncertainty of the sentence is a great defect in
the system proposed ; but still the system itself,
if it could be justly adapted to the various cir-
cumstances of our criminals, is intrinsically
good, though the point to which we have already
referred, the competition with honest labour
outside, would have to be well studied in carry-
ing out any such scheme. On the whole, the
Social Science Congress has done well to direct
public attention to so important a matter.