The English Prison System

THE ENGLISH PRISON SYSTEM

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

THE

ENGLISH PRISON
SYSTEM

BY

Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, K.C.B.

CHAIRMAN OF THE PRISON COMMISSION FOR
ENGLAND AND WALES

AND

PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL PRISON COMMISSION

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1921

COPYRIGHT

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

In October, 1910, I conveyed to the International Prison Congress at Washington the invitation of the British Government to hold the next Quinquennial Congress of 1915 in London. The invitation was accepted with enthusiasm. The London Congress of 1872 had prepared the way for the creation of the International Commission, which was founded a few years later; but, though supported and encouraged by the Government of the day, it owed its origin to American influence, notably that of the celebrated Dr. Wines. Great Britain did not formally adhere to the International Commission till 1895, when Mr. Asquith, then Home Secretary, nominated the present writer as British Representative to the Paris Congress of that year. Since that date, the Quinquennial Congresses had been held at Brussels, Buda-Pesth, and Washington in 1900, 1905, and 1910, at all of which the British Government was represented, the reports of the proceedings being duly submitted to Parliament.

The preliminary arrangements for the Congress in London in 1915 had been carefully prepared by meetings of the Commission representing the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Norway, Russia, Servia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. It was intended also to invite our Dominions-over-Sea—India, and Egypt, to send special representatives. These meetings were held in Paris in 1912, and in London in 1914, the British Committee consisting of the Chairmen of the Prison Boards for Scotland and Ireland (Lord Polwarth, and Mr. Max Green), Sir Basil Thomson, K.C.B., and Mr. A.J. Wall, O.B.E., the late and present Secretaries of the English Board, and myself, as President of the International Commission.

But man only proposes, and the Great War intervened to prevent the realization of those plans. It has, also, of course, for the time being, arrested the development, and thwarted the purpose, of what promised to be a great international movement for the discussion and improvement of all methods affecting the punishment and treatment of crime.

It was for the purpose of the Congress of 1915 that I prepared this short manual, in order that the history and leading features of the English Prison System might be understood by our foreign visitors, and especially its more notable developments of recent years, since England joined the Congress in 1895.[1]

I had been greatly impressed with the singular ignorance that existed, both on the Continent and in the United States, of the character of British penal methods.

In my Report on the Brussels Congress, 1900, I wrote as follows:—

"It is often asked, "What is the value of these Congresses?" It must not be supposed that an Englishman, going to hear discussions on penal subjects in a foreign country, where the laws, habits, and character of the people are entirely different, is going to bring back new ideas of Prison administration, which he will be able at once to apply, with advantage, in his own country; nor must it be supposed that he is going to carry with him instructions and opinions on these matters which other nations will readily adopt. With a pardonable pride in his national institutions, he is disposed to think that his Prison system is the best in the world; but when he goes abroad he must not be surprised to hear the same claim raised by other countries. He will find that where the English system is not known or is misunderstood, it is but little appreciated. There is a general idea that our punitive methods are harsh, if not barbarous. Legends circulate as to the terrors of the "fouet," the ingenious torture of "la roue," and the grinding tyranny of "travaux forcés." It is not surprising that even an intelligent foreigner fails to grasp the distinction between a sentence of "hard labour" and one of "penal servitude:" so misleading are our terms. At the recent Congress, the Head of the Russian Prisons asked me what is the minimum time for which a sentence of "hard labour" could be imposed, thinking that it was something in its duration and severity comparable to the "katorga" of his own country. When I explained that it might be inflicted for one day only, he turned to his Secretary with a smile, saying, "How little do we understand the English system!" There is a minority, and I hope an increasing one, who understand and appreciate the efforts that have been made of late years to improve the conditions of the treatment of crime in this country."

The comparatively few foreigners who had a personal acquaintance with our Institutions did not conceal their admiration for the order, method, discipline, and exactness which characterize our methods of dealing with crime; but, generally speaking, these legendary ideas prevailed.

The shadow of transportation, of the dark days of penal servitude, and of grievous floggings, hindered a true conception of English methods.

I looked forward to the London Congress as the occasion to dispel these illusions.

A short historical retrospect will show that it is only in comparatively modern times that 'Imprisonment' became the recognized method for the punishment of crime, and that prison reform, in the sense of moral improvement by imprisonment was formulated as a political duty, and became an earnest pre-occupation of statesmen and philosophers. Prisons, as places of punishment, were unknown to ancient Roman law. The 'carcer' was known only as a place for 'holding' prisoners, not for 'punishing' (ad continendos, non ad puniendos homines), and the object of punishment was frankly held by Roman legists to be only that of deterrence by fear. The 'carcer' is not mentioned in the list of Roman penalties: death by hanging, by being hurled from the Tarpeian rock, drowning in a sack; with exile, beating with rods, &c., were the methods with which as schoolboys we were familiar.

In that dark period of penal law, based, as it was, on the ideas of vengeance and intimidation alone, which lasted down to the French Revolution, we find little, or no, reference to Imprisonment as the punishment for crime. In the long list of punishments under the old French Code we find 'réclusion perpetuelle' as a punishment for women and a substitute for the galleys and banishment. There is too 'la prison perpetuelle,' but this was not an organized system, but really a euphemism for that mysterious disappearance of persons obnoxious to the Crown or the State by 'lettres de cachet,' or otherwise.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 marks the beginning of the reaction against these ideas, and the substitution of an orderly and methodical system of punishment. We find 'Imprisonment' formally installed for the execution of offences against the law in the French Code of 1791. At this time Mirabeau is said to have anticipated modern penitentiary science by publishing a remarkable report, declaring Prisons to be 'maisons d'amélioration,' founded on the principle of labour, separation, rewards under a 'mark' system, conditional licence, and aid-on-discharge. We seem to be reading a modern treatise on Prisons—a sudden gleam of light, bursting on an age darkened by the shadow of much unutterable cruelty in the punishment of crime.

But there were certain influences that had been silently operating for some time before this, and leading men's minds to a juster and truer conception of the purpose of punishment. Those influences were both ecclesiastical and secular. The influence of the Church in the middle ages has profoundly affected the modern idea of punishment. 'Le système pénitentiaire' is the direct heir of the 'pénitences' of the Church. In days when no distinction had yet been created between crime and sin, these were the expiation of both. The public 'pénitence' effected both repentance and example, as a warning to others. The private 'pénitence' worked by 'solitude,' to the moral value of which the early Church attached very great value—"Quoties inter homines fui, minus homo redii" was the guiding maxim which separated the monk from his fellow-man. 'Solitary confinement,' as we understand the phrase, dates from the old 'Detrusio in Monasterium' of Canonical law.

But while religious custom had rendered familiar the idea of deprivation of liberty as a means of effecting both repentance and expiation, the influence of the French philosophers and encyclopædists of the eighteenth century had destroyed the claims of the State to deprive a person of liberty by arbitrary process for indefinite periods, or for any period beyond that warranted by the strict necessity of the case. The famous treatise of Beccaria in the middle of the same century further determined the reaction against all arbitrary, unjust, and cruel penalties. He was the first of the utilitarians; every punishment which did not arise from actual necessity of social defence, was, to him and his school, tyrannical and superfluous. Its object was not to torment or afflict a sensitive human being beyond the strict limit of social utility. His propositions have become commonplaces now; but they were new in the age when they were written, and probably no work has exercised a greater influence in the domain of penal law.

It is true that, irrespective of the influence of the Church, and of the writings of philosophers, isolated experiments in the way of prison reform had been made in different parts of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some of these anticipated in a remarkable way the principles in vogue to-day.

The Protestants of Amsterdam in 1593 built a prison for women, which had for its object their moral reform by work and religious influences. There are records of similar establishments in Germany and Hanseatic towns. In 1703, Clement XI. built the famous Prison, St. Michel, for young prisoners, and, later in the century, Villain XIV. built the celebrated cellular prison at Gand, which excited the admiration of our own Howard.

It was the immortal Howard who first stirred public opinion in England to consider the question of prison reform. As Burke finely said of him "He surveyed all Europe, not to view the sumptuousness of palaces, but to survey the mansions of sorrow and of pain: to collect the distresses of men in all countries. The plan was original, and full of genius as of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery."

The names of Howard and Bentham will always stand in the forefront of those who in those dark days tried to enlist public sympathy for the prisoner and captive,—the former by his keen humanity, protesting against the abuses and barbarisms which he found to exist at home and abroad: the latter, as utilitarian and economist, devising a new system to secure, firstly, a rational system of legal punishment for the offence committed, and, secondly, a rational system of treatment while in prison after commitment.

To the casual student of English Prison history, Bentham is known chiefly as the author of the somewhat whimsical scheme known as the 'Panopticon'—a structural device for securing, in the first place, the safe custody of prisoners and economy of administration. Because he said boldly that he rejected sentiment in his construction of a Prison System, his influence has been sometimes regarded as hostile to the reformatory idea which was beginning to gain ground in Europe; but in rejecting sentiment, he, at the same time, admitted that, controlled by reason, it was a useful monitor, and, indeed, it is the great merit of Bentham that, in an age when there was grave need of adjustment of the essential factors of punishment, he worked for a compromise between a too great pre-occupation with its moral purpose, and a too severe insistence on its penal and terrifying effect. Though in vigorous language he preached the gospel of 'grinding rogues honest,' it was part of his plan to educate, to classify, to make methodical provision for discharge, and, lastly, he may be said to be the founder of the modern school of criminology in laying stress on the absolute necessity of preventing crime by discovering and combating its causes.

But Bentham was in advance of his age in these matters, though his writings exercised a considerable influence in France, where jurists were busy preparing the Penal Code of the First Empire. History, by the pen of Professor Lecky, has severely condemned the statesmen of that period for their callous indifference to all questions relating to the treatment of crime and of prisoners. He says: "England, which stood so high among the nations of the world in political, industrial, and intellectual eminence, ranked in this matter shamefully below the average of the Continent." There was, in fact, no penal system, strictly so-called. It was simply a policy of 'débarras,' under which all offenders against the law were shipped to the Colonies; young and old, grave and petty offenders were all banished under a rough and ready scheme of Transportation, (as explained in my Chapter on the history of Penal Servitude). So long as this System lasted—from 1787 to 1845—the modern problems, which are involved in keeping our prisoners at home, did not occupy the public mind. This apathy and callousness was not due entirely to the sense of security which Transportation gave by the practical elimination from the body politic of persons presumed dangerous to the State: it was due also to the want of imagination, which is the parent of cruelty. For this, the absence of any system of National Education must be held responsible. It was not until imagination was quickened by the great religious revivals, by the gradually increasing power of the Press—(the champion of all forms of unnoticed suffering) and by the spread of education among the masses, that Philanthropy, in its modern garb, the Inquisitor of prisons and of the dark places of the world, came down to the earth, and demanded that all those cruelties which were associated with English penal law should cease, and that it should no longer be possible to say with Sir S. Romilly (1817) that "the laws of England were written in blood." Excidat illa dies ævo nec cetera credant secula.

But dawn was breaking, and the impulse that was to compel attention to 'la question pénitentiaire' came from the other side of the Atlantic.

I have shown, in tracing the history of imprisonment for short sentences (Local Prisons) in this country, how paramount was the influence of America in the first half of the last century. The echo of the controversy between those who upheld the Auburn and the Philadelphian Systems—the Cellular and Associated plans—respectively, still lingers. In America, the movement which determined the reform of Prisons was essentially religious. It was the old idea of 'Pénitence' borrowed from the Canonical Law, which there, as in Europe, dominated the minds of men who regarded a sentence of the law as the instrument for bringing back the mind of the offender, by solitude and meditation, to remorse for the sinful act, and amendment for the future. The prison cell, as with the monks of old, was the method of redemption—"cella continuata dulcessit." If by its positive effect the cell worked redemption of the soul, its negative result was claimed to be equally efficacious in preventing contamination by means of segregation. Pressed severely to its logical conclusion, cellular seclusion became a refinement of cruelty, while, on the other hand, promiscuity, resulting from unregulated association, was admitted in this, as in other countries, to be the nursery of crime. From that day, the course of Prison Reform has been in the direction of finding a compromise between these two opposite principles; an effort to reconcile the deterrent effect of punishment with the object of so improving the mind and body of a prisoner that he shall leave Prison a better and not a worse man. Because it is a more inspiring and a nobler task to reform a man by punishment, than to use punishment merely as the means of retribution by exacting from him the expiation of his offence by a dull, soulless, and a monotonous servitude, public sentiment, in all its zeal for the rehabilitation of the offender, is apt to overlook the primary and fundamental purpose of punishment, which, say what we will, must remain in its essence retributory and deterrent.

It is a curious and interesting fact that a dispute between two neighbouring States in America as to the best plan to follow in dealing with offenders—whether it was better to keep them in their cells day and night, or during the night only, should have determined for England, France, and other parts of Europe the method of imprisonment to be adopted, viz:—the Cellular System. The System found favour in Europe, as in America, for its moral or religious value; in other words, the reform of the prisoner from this date takes its place deliberately as one of the essential factors of punishment, side by side with retribution and deterrence. As I have said, it was essentially a religious movement, but to the success of the propaganda, which elevated the cellular system almost to a fetish, there were contributing causes of a more practical nature,-the admitted evils of unregulated association, the urgent need of a new method of construction, the greater security of prisoners, and the economy of administration, resulting from the employment of a smaller staff for supervision. These latter considerations soon became the principal pre-occupation of those engaged in prison administration. For many years following the triumph of the cellular system, the originally dominating idea of moral reform, as the principal purpose of punishment, seemed to be lost sight of in a hurried rush, both in England and on the Continent, to build new prisons on the cellular plan, to improve their sanitary conditions, to regulate dietary, to organize labour, and generally to concentrate on the economic, rather than on the moral, improvement of those suffering imprisonment.

The writings of De Tocqueville and Beaumont, the delegates sent out by France to study the cellular plan in America, had a wide influence in restraining that excessive zeal for aiming at the moral or religious reform of prisoners, which had inspired the Quakers of Pennsylvania in their crusade against the abuses of the old system. The words of De Tocqueville are worth quoting, as they called back the minds of men at a time when such a warning was greatly needed, to a just and wise appreciation of the function and purpose of punishment, and corrected a tendency which is always asserting itself, to exaggerate the necessity for moral and spiritual reform, at the expense of the other essential attributes of punishment. He says, "I say it boldly: if the penitentiary system has no other purpose than reform, the lawgiver must abandon the system, not because it is not admirable, but because it is too rarely attained. The moral reform of the individual is a great thing for the religious man, but not for the statesman: a political institution does not exist for the individual, but for the mass. Moral reform is then only an accident of the system. Its value is in the habit of order, work, separation, education, obedience to inflexible rule. These have a profound moral value. If a man is not made honest, he contracts honest habits: he was a useless person, he now knows how to work: if he is not more virtuous, he is at least more reasonable: he has the morality of self-interest, if not of honour."

MM. De Tocqueville and Beaumont had been commissioned by the French Government in 1831 to visit the United States, and to report on the comparative advantages of the Auburn and Pennsylvania systems. They were followed in 1837 by M. Demetz, the famous founder of the Colony of Mettray. It was due to the influence of these men, aided by the writings of MM. Lucas and Bérenger in France, and of Ducpetiaux in Belgium, that a remarkable impulse was given in Western Europe to the adoption of the cellular system. Two International Congresses were held at Frankfort in 1846, which declared in favour of the separate system. It was to this period of keen interest in the question of prison reform that in England we owe the model prison at Pentonville, 1842, the Prison of Louvain in Belgium, and a large number of cellular prisons built in France, Switzerland, Prussia, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. We have here the beginning of the later International movement, which afterwards found expression in the International Prison Commission-a formal body of experts nominated by most of the leading States of the World, whose periodical meetings in different centres since the London Congress of 1872 are recognized as a great civilizing influence in all that relates to the treatment of prisoners, the construction of Prisons, and the revision of penal law.

It may be stated broadly that to France and America must be given the credit for the impulse and energy which lit and kept alive the torch of prison reform during those years of the last century, say 1830-70, when, by reason of dynastic changes on the Continent, and political struggles at home, the flame might have been obscured, or even extinguished. Although, in many countries, as in our own, eminent men and women, whose names will always live, had even from the middle of the eighteenth century, inspired by a lofty humanity, raised their voices in protest against the callous indifference which tolerated much cruelty and barbarity in the system of punishments, yet, the main impulse came, on the one hand, from the religious zeal of the Pennsylvanian Quakers who tried to utilize deprivation of liberty, by means of imprisonment, as an instrument for effecting the spiritual regeneration of the offender; on the other, from the political zeal for the rights of man—even the reversionary rights of the prisoner,—which dominated French thought, under the influence of the encyclopædists. These currents, reacting on each other, determined the course of public opinion in the direction of regarding a good, just, and humane prison system as the index of a progressive civilization. It was the combination of these two influences in concrete, which, just fifty years ago, inaugurated what may be called the 'modern system.' The famous Commission of enquiry into the state of Prisons, appointed by the National Assembly in France in 1871, and with which the names of d'Haussonville, Bérenger, and Félix Voisin will always be honourably connected, was followed immediately by the mission to Europe of Dr. Wines, the Secretary of the Prison Association of New York. To his energies we owe the London Congress of 1872, the parent of the International Prison Commission, established on a secure and lasting basis a few years later. In 1877, was founded in Paris the Société Générale des Prisons—the French Academy of penal science—a body of men distinguished in law, medicine, science, and philanthropy, who have consistently since that day, through their Journal, 'La Révue Pénitentiaire'—a monthly publication,—informed and educated public opinion throughout the civilized world on all questions relating to the treatment, and, notably, the prevention of crime.

The first International Congresses—known generally as 'Prison' Congresses, were concerned more with 'Prison' than with penal law, with visits to penal establishments, and with comparisons of Prison systems. The régime pénitentiaire was the principal pre-occupation, but the subjects of discussion soon outgrew the original limits. The sphere of inquiry gradually broadened. The prison régime is only the expression of the penal law, which itself again is only the expression of the public sentiment or opinion, which is the final arbiter in deciding the methods to be followed in maintaining the rights of the community against those who threaten its peace and security. Succeeding Congresses, therefore, as was to be anticipated, composed, as they were, not only of Prison officials and experts in prison management, but of persons from all countries, distinguished in law, medicine, and science, claimed for themselves a larger field and a more ambitious title. La 'Science' pénitentiaire is declared to be the new scope and title of the work. It is an all-embracing phrase, and, from the necessities of the case, of ambiguous meaning. It includes both practical knowledge of administration, and the knowledge by which Science, in its strict sense, can inform and instruct in dealing with the problem of crime, and of criminal man. To these must be added Social Science, and all implied by that wide term. The reaction that became manifest at the close of the last century was against what is called the "classical" conception of crime and punishment. Professor G. Vidal, the eminent author of 'Droit Criminel et la science pénitentiaire' has shown how rigid and mechanical, under the influence of the French penal code, the administration of criminal justice had become. The accused was simply a 'type abstrait' a "mannequin vivant sur lequel le juge colle un numéro du code pénal." A reaction against this abstract conception of crime came in the early 'eighties from a school of Criminologists known as the Italian School, of which the chief was Lombroso. Theories of the criminel-né—i.e., a human being fore-doomed to crime by atavistic propensity, and distinguishable physical stigmata, or 'tares physiologiques'—created considerable sensation at the time, and it cannot be denied that, though refuted by later enquiry, they exercised a profound influence in Europe, and gave a direct impulse to the scientific study of the causes predisposing to criminal acts. This study has since become the principal pre-occupation in all countries of those interested in what, by a misnomer, is spoken of generally as Prison Reform. The phrase remains, but it refers no longer to questions concerning the construction and management of prisons, the comparative merits of the cellular or associated plan, forms and methods of prison industries, staff and discipline. The Prison Reformer of to-day has adopted from Continental writers a phrase, which is at once the motto and the principle of his faith. 'L'individualization de la peine' sums up concisely the new tendency. This phrase aptly expresses the efforts now being made throughout the civilized world to grapple with the problem: not by dealing with prisoners as 'abstract types,' or in the mass, by imposing hard and fast regulations to be adopted for one and all irrespective of individuality, but to deal with each case on its merits: to note its peculiarities, and above all things, by 'preventive' measures to avert an otherwise certain gravitation towards crime.

In the working out of this problem, the International Commission is a sort of 'League of Nations,' ever striving by the invention of new Preventive measures, not so much to improve the habitation, custody, and treatment of offenders who are committed to prison, but to prevent them from arriving at that stage where commitment to prison becomes necessary, for long or short periods, in the interests of the security and protection of the community.

The aid of science is more and more invoked, and it is with reason and good purpose that the International movement professes to be a movement for the discovery and propagation of 'la science pénitentiaire.' Of all the sciences invoked in the cause of prison reform, medical science is assuming more and more a preponderating rôle in the domain of criminal justice. The mysterious laws of 'psychiatry'—a word of common use and application in all discussions in the problem of crime,—now engage, especially in the United States, a keen and close attention. The 'psychical laboratory' is, in many States, a necessary appanage of a penal institution. In theory, the knowledge of the mental state of a person committing an offence is a condition precedent to a correct assessment of guilt. Such investigation includes not only the diagnosis by scientific test of mental state, but of all those pathological conditions resulting, perhaps, from physical or external causes, hereditary or otherwise, which may be held to attenuate responsibility for any given act. The psychical laboratory as a system in aid of justice assumes, of course, a normal or reasonable being, and to such a being alone can full responsibility be attached. It is obvious to what extravagance such a system can be pushed, but the underlying principle is sound, and a perfect prison system, based on science, would adapt its treatment to a far greater degree than at present to the varying categories of offenders, who, under the old classical system, which recognized only the uniform and abstract type of crime and criminal, would be consigned equally to the one abstract and uniform type of penalty—the prison cell.

But it is not only medical science which claims this preponderating rôle. If the Lombrosian School erred in asserting the predominant influence of what was called the 'physio-psychical' conditions of crime: if the right to punish man be based not on the character of the crime, but on the constitution of the criminal, the doctor would usurp the function of the judge, and the bankruptcy of the old penal system would be complete. It was in protest against this extravagant assertion of the claims of medical and mental science (medico-légale expertise) that a succession of Congresses was held on the Continent in the latter part of the last century (Congrès International d'anthropologie et sociologie), at the last of which—the Congress of Geneva, 1896—the English Government was represented. The general result of the discussions that took place was to reject the Lombrosian idea of the physical or constitutional causes of crime, and to assert the importance of 'milieu' (nurture and environment) as the predisposing factor in anti-social conduct,—in the words of Dr. Lacassagne, Professor of Legal Medicine at Lyon—words which sum up tersely the familiar view that crime is entirely the result of social conditions, 'le milieu social est le bouillon de culture de la criminalité, le microbe c'est le criminel.'

The relative part played by inherited propensity and social environment remains to-day the leading subject of controversy with those interested in the philosophical aspect of crime. England has contributed its share to this controversy in the remarkable work of Dr. Goring "The Study of the English Convict," of which I have given a brief account in the Chapter "A Criminological Inquiry in English Prisons." His early death has robbed penal science of a brilliant and earnest votary; but his work will always remain as the first attempt to analyze the causes of crime by strictly scientific method. An abridged edition of his work has lately been published, with an Introduction by Professor Karl Pearson, under whose auspices and guidance it was compiled at the Biometric Laboratory of the London University. An Introduction by Professor Pearson not only marks the great scientific value of this attempt to probe the causes of crime, but gives a just and merited appreciation of a singular effort by a very remarkable man to test the observations and experience that came to him as a Medical Officer of Prisons by the latest methods of scientific investigation.

On the Continent of Europe there has been proceeding since 1869 an attempt to reconcile the extreme views of the Italian School as to the predestination by atavistic or innate disposition to criminal acts with the theory that the causes of crime are to be sought exclusively in social condition. In that year, was founded l'Union Internationale de droit pénal, of which the most distinguished founders were three Professors of Law—Van Hamel, Prins, and Von Liszt, Professors of Law at the Universities of Antwerp, Belgium, and Berlin, respectively. Since that date, Congresses have been held at Brussels, Berne, Christiania, Lisbon and Buda-Pesth. The object of this School, while admitting the value of experimentation by anthropological and sociological study and research, was to encourage preventive work, so that the occasion of crime might be anticipated, be it that of social circumstance which induced the predisposition to the anti-social act (the occasional criminal), or the psycho-physiological state which, unless discovered and checked in the beginning by appropriate preventive handling, medicinal or institutional, is likely to become the parent of conduct dangerous to the community (the habitual criminal). The two factors, external and internal, often co-exist, and the difficulty of the problem must be intensified by their co-existence. It is, therefore, only by the 'individualization of punishment' i.e., by a careful, and exact, and scientific system of preventive diagnosis that a true and correct assessment of criminal responsibility can be attained. This is the modern system—the point to which the long road of penal device, theory, and invention leads. The problem is scientific and social. To deal with it effectively we require not only what science can disclose in the sphere of mental diagnosis, and therapeutics (psychiatry), but what the improvement of social condition can effect in raising the standard of life.

It may not occur to those who observe casually, and perhaps carelessly, the phenomenon of crime to what an extent it depends on, and can be explained by, strictly social conditions. What is summarized by criminologists under the title of 'l'hygiène préventive' comprises all those social and political reforms which make up the 'Social Programme,' which is engaging the attention of our statesmen to-day. Better housing and lighting, the control of the Liquor Traffic, cheap food, fair wages, insurance, even village Clubs, and Boy Scouts, in fact, all the special and political problems in vogue to-day—all react directly on the state of crime. The great War—terrible and hard school of experience though it has been—has given us the great object lesson of what new conditions of life, resulting notably from the control of the Liquor Trade and facility of employment, can effect. A century of legislation directed to the changes of the penal code, or the methods of punishment, would not effect what social legislation, induced by the War, and affecting the daily habit and living of the people, has revealed during the last five years,—the numbers coming to prison reduced 75 per cent! 71 per 100,000 committed to prison in 1918, as against 369 in 1913: the committals for Drunkenness reduced from 70,000 to 2,000: the almost complete disappearance of Vagrancy—a reduction from 24,000 to 1,200—the "plaie sociale"—the despair and the problem of the prison and social reformer.

By recapitulating shortly in this Preface the history of punishment in its successive phases since the question of Prison Reform first began to occupy the minds of statesmen and philanthropists in the middle of the eighteenth century, I have endeavoured to make it clear to those who, in the future, will be responsible for the law and practice of Prisons, the direction in which progress lies. Given firm, thoughtful, humane administration in all that concerns the actual custody of all offenders of both sexes of the various categories, given a wise classification and treatment according to age, sex, and nature of the offence—the future lies in Preventive Science; on the one hand, medical science, strictly so-called, which shall, by diagnosis and therapeutics of the mental and physical state, in early age before it is too late, correct and restrain by suitable preventive means, institutional or otherwise, the tendency to anti-social conduct; and on the other, social or political science, which, by raising the standard of life among the masses, will re-constitute the 'milieu' whence vice and misery spring. Let not the reproach again be made by an English historian that "England falls shamefully below the level of foreign countries" in this great matter. If foreign countries rightly admire the method, discipline, firmness, and impartiality of our penal system, let them also recognize that we are not behindhand in what Preventive Science has to teach in the domain of medicine, law, and social hygiene. While firmly maintaining the system of human rights unimpaired, and while not failing in the protection of the State from any attack made on that system by persons, individually or collectively, let us exhaust every means for saving the potential offender from succumbing inevitably, in the absence of prophylactic methods, to the temptations to commit anti-social acts, which from causes mental, physical, or social he is unable to resist. This is the meaning of the 'individualization of punishment'—it is quite consistent with a firm administration of penal justice, but it destroys for ever the old classical idea of the 'abstract type of criminal.' In other words, justice demands that the old formula of 'Imprisonment with or without hard labour' indiscriminately applied, shall no longer be held to satisfy all her claims.

The reaction against this so-called 'dosimétrie pénale' i.e., the abstract conception of crime and the mechanical application of punishment 'according to code' is a growing force. It is marked in the United States of America by the universal adoption of the 'Indeterminate sentence,' and on the Continent of Europe by various degrees for conditional conviction and liberation which find their place in the latest penal codes. In England and America, Probation: in France and Belgium, the 'sursis à l'exécution de la peine'—all mark the reluctance to resort to fixed penalties when Justice can be satisfied by other means. England, I believe, stands alone in its adoption of the system of Preventive Detention—one of the most notable reforms of recent years for dealing with the Habitual Criminal. The success of the system, so far as it has gone, goes far to justify belief in the virtue of Indetermination of sentence. Public opinion may not be ripe for this yet, as applied to ordinary crime, but the principle which the system of Preventive Detention illustrates, viz:—the careful observation of the history, character, and prospects on discharge by an Advisory Committee on the spot, with a view to the grant of conditional freedom, furnishes in a different sphere an interesting example of the value of 'individualization.' The strict condition of release is that a man places himself under the care and supervision not of the Police, but of a State Association, organized and subsidized by the Government, but entirely controlled by a body of unofficial workers, who keep him under strict but kindly supervision, provide him with employment and lodgings, but unfailingly report him to the Authorities if he fails to observe any one of the conditions on which freedom has been granted. The singular success of this system applied to the worst and most inveterate criminals, each of whom has been found by a Jury to belong to the habitual criminal class, has naturally induced the opinion which is gaining ground, that similar methods might, with advantage, be used in dealing with the ordinary penal servitude population, and be substituted for the old ticket-of-leave system, under which remission of sentence can be earned by a more or less mechanical observance of prison rules, on the condition that the unexpired portion of the sentence is passed under Police Supervision. It is possible that comparison of the two systems may engage public attention in the future, when interest in prison reform, obscured and diminished by the greater problems which the war has created, again asserts itself.

I have shown in the Chapter on Discharged Prisoners the indispensability of a good system of 'Patronage' or aid-on-discharge. Much has been done in this respect in recent years. The action of the Government in 1911 in recognizing the supreme importance of regulating the discharge of persons from penal servitude by the establishment of a State Association for this purpose, was a great step forward. To the Central Association for the aid of discharged convicts, then created, may be attributed a large and an honourable share in that remarkable decrease of recidivism which prison statistics illustrate, and to which reference is made in my Chapter on "Patronage, or Aid-on-discharge." It is also a remarkable example of the value of a co-operation by which the resources of the State, and the enthusiasm and freedom of action possessed by a voluntary association, can contribute to the diminution of crime.

The retrospective study of crime in this country since the London Congress, 1872 (Chapter XVII.), must suggest many reflections, both concerning its treatment in the past, and its prospect for the future. If we eliminate the period of War, 1914-18, the special conditions of which I have already referred to, the broad deduction may be made that so long as the classical conception of punishment remained, i.e., the mechanical application of the letter of the law to an abstract type of offender, no great impression was being made either in the number or character of offences. Statistics varied from year to year under the influence of special circumstances; but the great stage army of offenders in all the categories continued its unbroken array, with a monotonous regularity, and it seemed almost a mockery to talk of social progress, when, in the background was the silent, ceaseless tramp of this multitude of men, women, and children, finding no rest but behind prison walls, and only issuing thence to re-enter again.

In Chapter VII. (The Inquiry of 1894), I have shown how the public conscience awoke at the end of the last century. It declared in a voice that could be heard that a determined effort must be made to grapple with this problem, and in two ways in particular, (a) It asserted the new policy of Prevention, not Prevention in the sense of the old penal servitude Acts, by which a criminal was prevented after a series of offences by strict supervision of Police from repeating his crimes, but Prevention which would strike at the sources of crime, by cutting off the supply by concentration of effort on the young offender; and (b) by the organization of such a system of Patronage, or Aid-on-discharge, that no prisoner could say with truth that he had fallen again from want of a helping hand. Prevention, in this sense, has been the watch-word of the Prison System since that time, and its effect is distinctly traceable in the statistics of crime since the beginning of the century.

Enough has been said to show that the future of crime is with the statesmen and men of science. The prison administrator plays only a small and obscure executive part—but from his experience and observation of the causes that make for crime, he may be able to denote the direction in which its gradual solution may be found. A quarter of a century spent by the Author in directing the prison administration of this country is his excuse for offering his humble contribution to this absorbing and all-important theme—

"Enough if something from our hands gives power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour."

E.R.B.

December, 1920.