Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/779

PRISON DISCIPLINE 755 to move with the times, to adopt suggestions tending towards improvement, and generally to benefit by external advice and experience, has always characterized convict prison administration in recent years. Remedies have been at once applied where flaws were found. Thus in 1877-78 efforts were made to minimize contamination by segregating the worst criminals, and restricting conversa tion at exercise. Again, the recommendation of the latest commission of inquiry, that of 1878-79, tending in the same direction was immediately adopted, and a special class was formed in 1880 in which all convicts "not versed in crime," first offenders or at least comparatively innocent men, are now kept apart from the older and more hardened criminals. While these concessions have been cheerfully made, the stern necessities of a penal system have been rigorously maintained. The committee last quoted gave it as their opinion that " penal servitude as at present administered is on the whole satisfactory ; it is effective as a punishment and free from serious abuses ; a sentence of penal servitude is now generally an object of dread to the criminal population." This change is ascribed to the various improvements in troduced " longer sentences, spare diet, and generally a more strict enforcement of work and discipline." Having thus traced the history of secondary punish ments and prison discipline in England from the earliest times to the present day, it will be well to describe briefly the system of penal repression as now actually in force. This will best be effected by following those who break the law through all stages from that of arrest, through conviction, to release, conditional or complete. After a short detention in a police cell places of durance which still need improvement an offender, unless disposed of summarily, passes into one of Her Majesty s local prisons, there to await his trial at sessions or assizes. The period thus spent in the provinces will never exceed three months ; in London, with the frequent sittings at Clerkenwell and of the Central Criminal Court, it is seldom more than one month. While awaiting trial the prisoner may wear his own clothes, provide his own food, see and communicate with his friends and legal adviser, so as to prepare fully for his defence. His fate after conviction depends on his sentence. If this be imprisonment, so called to distin guish it from penal servitude, although both mean depriva tion of liberty and are closely akin, it is undergone in one of the "local" prisons the prisons till 1878 under local jurisdiction, but now entirely controlled by the state through the home secretary and the commissioners of prisons. The regime undergone is cellular ; able-bodied prisoners are kept in strict separation for at least one month, and during that time subjected to first-class hard labour, which is purely penal in character ; and nowa days, under the uniform system introduced by the commis sioners, consists of the treadwheel, in which each indivi dual ascends 8640 feet in a day s work, or six hours work on cranks or hard labour machines is exacted where there are no treadwheels ; and the labour, whether of treadwheel or crank, is generally utilized as the motive power for grinding corn or pumping water for prison use. Beating oakum with a heavy beater and mat-making with heavy implements are also considered first-class hard labour. A system of progressive stages not unlike the mark system has been adopted in the local prisons, and the prisoner s progress through each depends on his own industry and good conduct. During the first month he sleeps on a plank bed, a wooden frame raised from the floor, with bedding but without mattress. When he has earned the proper number of marks, which at the earliest cannot be until one month has elapsed, he passes into the second stage, and is allowed better diet, and a mattress twice a week. The third stage, at the end of the third month, gives him further privileges as regards diet and bed. The fourth stage concedes to the prisoner a mattress every night, and the privilege, if well conducted, to communi cate by letter or through visits with his friends outside. These stages are applicable to females except as regards the plank bed ; while youths under sixteen and old men above sixty are also allowed mattresses. A small gratuity may be earned during the second and three following stages, amounting in the aggregate to ten shillings. The labour, too, may be industrial, and include instruction in tailoring, shoemaking, basket-making, book-binding, printing, and many more handicrafts. Throughout the sentence the prisoner has the advantage of religious and moral instruction ; he attends divine service regularly and according to his creed, is visited by the chaplain, and receives educational assistance according to his needs. His physical welfare is watched over by competent medi cal men ; close attention is paid to the sanitary condition of prisons ; strict rules govern the size of the cells, with their lighting, warming, and ventilation. Dietaries are everywhere the same ; they are calculated with great nicety according to the terms of durance, and afford variety and ample nutrition without running into excess. In a word, as regards discipline, labour, treatment, exactly the same system obtains throughout the United Kingdom from Bodmin to the far north, from Cork to Belfast. Where the sentence passes beyond two years it ceases to be styled imprisonment and becomes penal servitude, which may be inflicted for any period from five years to life. The prisoner becomes a convict, and undergoes his penalty in one or more of the convict prisons. These are entirely under state management. A sentence of penal servitude, as now administered, consists of three distinct periods or stages : (1) that of probation endured in separate confinement at a so-called " close " prison ; (2) a period of labour in association at a public works prison ; and (3) conditional release for the unexpired portion of the sentence upon licence or ticket-of -leave. (1) In the first stage, which is limited to nine months for reasons already given, the convict passes his whole time in his cell apart from other prisoners, engaged at some industrial employment. He exercises and goes to chapel daily in the society of others, but holds no com munication with them ; his only intercourse with his fellow creatures is when he is visited by the governor, chaplain, schoolmaster, or trade instructor. This period of almost unbroken solitude, when the mind, thrown in on itself, is supposed to be peculiarly open to lessons of ad monition and warning, is one of severely penal character, and its duration has therefore been wisely limited. It is deemed, moreover, that perpetual seclusion in a cell is an artificial state of existence, that its infliction for long terms would altogether unfit an offender for a return to the ordinary conditions of daily life. (2) The second is a longer stage, and endures for the whole or a greater part of the remainder of the sentence, its duration being governed by the power a convict holds in his own hands to earn a remission. It is passed at a public works prison, either at Borstal, Chatham, Chattenden, Ports mouth, Portland, Dartmoor, or (for the present) Worm wood Scrubs. While cellular separation, except at work, at prayers, or exercise, is strictly maintained, labour is in association under the close and constant supervision of officials. Intercommunication no doubt takes place ; men working together in quarry, brickfield, or barrow-run, and out of earshot of their guardians, may and do converse at times. But the work is too arduous to allow of long and desultory conversation ; while the chance of mutual con

tamination is now minimized by the separation of the less