The Sun.
London, England, 1856-07-09 00:00:00

SUGGESTIONS FOR PREVENTION OF CRIME►

13IR3IINGI1AM, Tuesday.—At the Birmingham quarter
sessions yesterday, Mr. M. D. Hill, Q.C., the recorder,
observed, in thei course of an address to the grand jury,
that the (ifficultiee which stand in the way of convicting .;
the pra,ctisei receiver of stolen goods who keeps a shop 1
for taking in this kind of goods have turned the attention
of many persons to consider whether a trade of this kind
ought to be permitted to be an open trade, and whether
it should not be centrolled and regulated by licence. If
there were lker o for such shops they should 'only be
uyatited on sntrie condition. No person should receive ,
a licence unless he could show that he was a respectable ,
tier,on, by bringing the. signatures in his favour of a
given number of persens—hous -ho'ders of known honesty
and integrity. Aeam, it he been proposed that every
house should be so constructed as not to be out of the
oeservation of the police, and that the occupiers of then%
should be required to keep a book containing an ace
count of the articles purchased by them, and the homes
of those persons who buy them. All this has been
done in the town of Liverpool. lam informed (cow
tinned the recorder) by his worship the mayor, who
sit: by my side, that the local bill, wbice was prepared
to be submitted to Parliament this session, contained
a provision for this object, copied from the local act
in operation at Liverpool. I regret to find that the bill
was net prosecuted, as to the cause of which I may not
be correctly informed, as it is no part of my duty to ob•
tain -an ae-eurate knowledge of such questions ; but I do
say that that particular clause, of the insertion of which
I am cognisant, from a draft of the bill having been sent
me, was likely to have been exceedingly useful to the
town of Birmingham, and I regret that the measore was
not laid upon the table of the House of Commons; and
I trust that on a future occasion it may have a better
fate. There is only one further observation which I
have to make, and it is this, that I see no amelioration
in one important particular, and that is, if our treatment
of criminals had been well adapted to reform them, we
should not have had such a list as comes before Us to-
day. There are ninety five prisoners for trial; and
with regard to more than one bad of the number they •
are persons who have previous convictions recorded
against them, and who con-equently have not been de-
terred by the h-ar of ericount,rirg punishment from re•
peating their offences', or reformed by the discipline to
which they were sul jeered. Now, gentlemen, the main '
reason why the latter object is not attained is this, that '
hey are not under the control of the prison authorities
fir a sufficient length of time. How can you expect a
person, old or youeg, to u. dere° any decided change of
character during a fortnight, a month, two months, or
three months?—and until public opinion,•instead of
complaining of harshness when prisoners are committed
for long periods, is led to-perceive that it is a kindness
even to the offenders, to place them under circura• •
stances by which their character may be reformed, and
that it is a false notion of kindness to desire that they
should be speedily liberated- I am afield that until this
conviction forces itself upon the public mind, the duties
of grand jurors will year by year become more onerous.
I believe that commitments for short periods are a sort
.of education in crime. A prisoner discovers that im-
prisonment can be better borne than be imagined, and
finding, when be cornea out of prison, that the difficulties
of maintaining himself by honest means are greatly in-
creased, having lost his dread of the gaol, and what is
worse than all, having lost his friends in the lowest
classes of society, and acquired them amongst those who
looked favourably upon him in proportion as he became
more unprinciple e sinks lower into the depths of ini-
quity. Sentences must be passed in accordance with
public opinion, and it is often impracticable to resort
to such as would be very humane and sanctioned by
law, because the principle on which they would be
based is not generally recognised, and its partial opera..
tion would engerener the feeling that offences were pus
i,ished, not according to their magnitude, but to the
distinction with which they were committed. Every
year, the public are becoming more and more Sensitive
on this subject, and punishments are becoming lighter
and lighter. lam now an old man, and have been en-
ea;ed in the duties of my, profession nearly forty years,
and when I contrast the state of punishments, as I first
knew them, with what they now are, the change is enor-
mous. In n any respects the change has been for the ,'
.el ter, but I think that we are now running into a
angeroue extreme of an opposite kind, and that if the

system of l.ght punishments is to be persevered in, we
had better have no punikhments at all. They neither
leter nor reform, whereas they ba've the bad effect of
flinging poor creatures into contact with those who •re
Norse than themselves, and teaching theta to pursue a
life of crime.