the United Kingdom where eighty per cent. of the criminals are restored to society with character and credit.
That part of the kingdom is Ireland, where, under the same law which is supposed to work so badly in England, the ticket-of-leave system works better than any other method ever tried. Though this looks like the same fountain yielding sweet and bitter water, it is not so. The difference is that in Ireland the provisions of the Act have been respected, while in England they are neglected. Our remedy, therefore, is to get the system duly put in practice in England. When that is done, we may be relieved of our insecurity of life and property from so many of our criminals being at large: and till it is done we cannot be relieved.
The class of hard and hopeless criminals is not large. It is a disgrace to a society like ours that it cannot manage that mischievous element: but the failure is partly due to the good-natured mistake of respectable people in imagining criminals to be like themselves in feelings and in views. It does not enter their innocent heads that criminals are not ashamed, but vain of their pursuits; that they have peculiar notions of honour and conscience, and views quite unlike ours of what is desirable in life. Our respectable people therefore do not know what to aim at in the management of our convicts, and do not understand the importance of the system which is entirely spoiled in its operation in England by certain of its provisions being neglected which are carefully fulfilled in the successful cases in Ireland.
Most of us agree so far as this: that the first aim in the management of our convicts is the security of society; and the next, the reformation of the criminal. Beyond that point, most people’s notions are still very hazy: and they cry out for a new system because society ought to be secure from burglary and garotting, and is not, while the burglars and garotters are often found to be ticket-of-leave men, or discharged convicts who are confounded with them.
The manifest necessity of the case is to render society secure by one of two ways; by bringing the criminal to the right view of good, and into the habits which belong to it, or to seclude him from the opportunity of doing mischief. The last method is impracticable for the whole number of our convicts, for their whole lives: and society in England has decided that so much seclusion as is necessary to the other object shall be inflicted, and no more. This is the principle of the ticket-of-leave system; and its soundness is not questioned by any sensible person who rightly apprehends it.
A certain term of imprisonment is specified which the convict is sentenced to fulfil, unless his moral improvement renders him fit to re-enter society sooner. But the relaxation of the sentence is by the Act rendered cautious and gradual, and the punishment remains impending for the whole term, in case of any reason appearing to suppose that the liberated offender is not behaving well. He has the conditions printed on his ticket-of-leave. He is informed that the eye of the police is always upon him; and that he will be brought back to prison, not only if he commits any new offence—(for which he will be more heavily punished than for a first offence)—but if he associates with persons of notoriously bad character, if he leads an idle or dissolute life, or if he has no visible means of livelihood. Such circumstances show that he is not fit to be trusted with freedom; and he will be brought back to prison, to undergo the remainder of his sentence.
So says the Act,—the same Act that is the professed sanction of the system pursued in London and in Dublin. Yet, in Ireland society is relieved of its criminals, and of the dread of them, while in England our suffering from them is what we have seen. The reason of the contrast is that in England those provisions of the Act which relate to the security of society are grossly neglected, while in Ireland they have been taken to heart, and fulfilled with eminent wisdom and conscientiousness. Here we reach the practical point. We, in England, must get its full worth out of the Act, as the administrators at Dublin have done. Instead of crying out against the ticket-of-leave system, we must see that it is faithfully administered, according to law, and fairly brought into use.
The grand consideration is to train the criminal up to a condition of harmlessness, and to make sure that this is done before he is presented with his freedom. He comes into prison hating work and admiring idleness; despising small and gradual earnings, and covetous of sudden and large gains by theft; utterly contemptuous of simplicity and honesty, and respecting and honouring hypocrisy and lying when anything is to be got by them.
It can do no good to shut a man up, full of such notions, which are those of his whole life, and of all his companions; and to suppose that he has changed his mind when he says he has, or when he has behaved well for a certain term; and to let him loose upon society, with a ticket-of-leave. He knows very well that the conditions printed on the ticket will never be thought of again; or he gets out of sight and out of reach, as soon and as nearly as he can; and thus society is again afflicted with the pest which it so dreads. He murders somebody, or commits a burglary, and is brought back to prison under a new sentence. If he is recognised for what he is, his sentence is the heaviest provided by law: and it can hardly be heavy enough for the wrath of society which complains of being haunted by ruffians like these who are every day prematurely released from the punishment of their former crimes. One instance of the operation of the English procedure, as related by four visiting justices of the West Riding, who have been studying the two methods, gives us a fair notion of the working of the system in England.
There is now a convict, six-and-twenty years old, who is likely to be a pest to society for his whole life, if society goes on to treat him as it has done for the last ten years. His story is as follows:
Ten years ago J. H., as I will call him here,
