The Punishment of Crime : Part 6

Crime and Its Causes
By William Douglas Morrison

(Page 14 of 14)

Unfortunately, a certain portion of its members do not possess them even in an elementary degree, and no amount of seclusion in prison will ever confer these qualities upon them. Imprisonment, to be followed by liberty, however rigorous it is made, is accordingly no solution of the difficulty; the only effective way of dealing with the incorrigible vagrant, drunkard, and thief, is by some system of permanent seclusion in a penal colony. All men are not fitted for freedom, and so long as society acts on the supposition that they are, it will never get rid of the incorrigible criminal.

It has also to be remembered that a considerable proportion of incorrigible offenders are not only mentally but also physically unfitted to earn their living in a free community. Almost always without a trade, and very often the children of diseased and degenerate parents, the only kind of work which they can turn to is rude manual labor, and this is exactly the kind of work they have not the requisite physical strength to perform. It is only in skilled trades that the physically weak have a chance at all, and if a feeble person is not a skilled artisan he will, unless possessed of superior mental gifts, find it rather a hard matter to earn a comfortable livelihood. Should it be the case that such a person is below the average in body and mind, to earn a livelihood becomes almost an impossibility. Now, this is exactly the position of many habitual criminals, and more especially of that large class of them which is being continually convicted and reconvicted of petty offenses. What can be said of them, except to repeat that they are unfit to take a part in working the modern industrial machine; what can be done with them except to seclude them in such a way that they will be no longer able to injure those who can work it.

Outside the ranks of the incorrigible and incapable there exists a large class of offenders who are perfectly able to earn a honest living in the world. In many cases it happens that such men require no assistance on their liberation from prison; they can resume work immediately their sentence has expired. All that is needed is to send them back to the district they were tried in, and this is what is always done if a man cannot reach his destination by mid-day on the morning of his liberation. But in a certain number of cases discharged prisoners require more than this; they require tools, or clothes, or property redeemed from pledge, or a lodging, or to be sent a long distance home, or to be emigrated. In each and all of these cases, people who are not incorrigible criminals are assisted to the best of their ability and the extent of their funds by Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies.

One or more of these admirable institutions is attached to every Local Prison, and every year a vast amount of quiet, conscientious work is performed. These societies are voluntary agencies formed for the relief of discharged prisoners. Their funds are derived partly from private subscriptions and donations, partly from ancient bequests, and partly from a small sum annually voted by Parliament. They are conducted on the most economic principles, the gentlemen who form the committee or who act as secretaries and treasurers being mostly magistrates and men of substance, who gladly give their time and services for nothing. The only person who has to be paid is an agent whose duty it is to see that the recommendations of the committee with respect to assisting the discharged prisoners are carried into effect.

A glance at the work of one of these societies will be the best way of forming a conception of their usefulness as a whole. For this purpose let us select the Surrey and South London Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society. In the prison in which the work of this excellent society is conducted, 17 percent. of the prison population applied for aid in 1887, and 10 percent. were assisted, the 7 percent. refused assistance were habitual offenders, and had often been previously helped. Of the number assisted, consisting of 969 people, 54 were sent to sea, 2 were assisted to emigrate, 913 were assisted in the way of redemption of tools, purchase of stock, purchase of clothing, and so on. In 1888, 929 people were assisted, 54 were sent to sea, 4 were helped to emigrate, and 871 aided in other ways. In 1889, assistance was rendered in 1009 cases of these 36 were sent to sea, and 973 otherwise aided. The average cost per head of sending cases to sea is three pounds, fourteen shillings; the average cost in other cases is half a guinea.

What is being done by the Surrey Society is only a sample of the assistance rendered to discharged prisoners all over England. It should also to be stated that some of these Aid Societies undertake to look after the destitute families of people committed to prison, and cases innumerable might be mentioned in which prisoners' wives and children have been assisted and kept out of the workhouse until the release of the bread-winner. Other societies again provide permanent homes for destitute offenders on their discharge from prison. All that is required of people making use of those homes is, that they should earn as much as will cover a portion of the expense of providing them with food and shelter. For this purpose work is always provided for them, or if they prefer it, they may find occupation outside and make the home a sort of temporary resting-place.

It is hardly necessary to add that Prisoners' Aid Societies could effect much more if they were better supported by the public. The organization is there; the men to work it are there; the only impediment to their labors is a lack of funds. If the possession of adequate funds enabled all the Prisoners' Aid Societies to establish Homes for discharged prisoners, those institutions might be made of the greatest service to the cause of justice generally. It would then be easy to get a return from them of the number of people whose criminal life was due to sheer indolence, and magistrates would have far less hesitation in dealing with them than they do now. At the present time, it is sometimes difficult to know whether an offender is willing to work if he had the opportunity, but the existence of prisoners' homes would soon solve the question. Reference to a man's record in one of these institutions would at once place the magistrate in full possession of the facts, and he would be able to give judgment with a knowledge of the offender he does not now possess. In this way many cruel mistakes might be avoided; and, on the other hand, many hardened offenders dealt with in a more effective manner.

The difficulty sometimes encountered by discharged prisoners in finding employment, as well as many other evils inseparable from imprisonment, has, in recent years, led an increasing number of jurists to the conclusion that every other method of punishment should, when the case at all admits of it, be exhausted before the jail is resorted to. "The very first principle of enlightened penology," says Mayhew, "is to endeavor to keep people out of prison as long as possible, rather than thrust them into it for the most trivial offenses." In many instances it is quite sufficient punishment for a first offender in a petty case to be publicly rebuked in the police court.

Such a rebuke preceded, as it generally is, by a night's confinement in the police cells, is just as effective as a deterrent and far less likely to do permanent harm than a sentence of imprisonment. It was something of this kind which Bacon had in view, when he says, respecting criminal courts: "Let there be power also to inflict a note or mark; such, I mean, as should not extend to actual punishment, but may end either in admonition only, or in a light disgrace; punishing the offender as it were with a blush." A certain amount of progress has been made of late in this direction, but there is still ample room for more. On the other hand, experience has shown that light punishments are of no avail against habitual offenders. For the last few years this system has been in operation in the borough of Liverpool, with the result that the number of known thieves apprehended for indictable crimes has almost doubled within a comparatively short period.