youths, cruel. prison." This was a serious evil. Our magistrates and judges were actually training expert thieves, and developing the daring mind and recklessness of the highwayman and the burglar. Conscience, pity, and judgment led some to revolt against the practice of promiscuously herding criminals of so tender an age together with adult miscreants in our gaols. What was to be done? The benevolent and ingenious extended the system of separate and solitary confinement to children. What are the results? One autho- Applied to rity observes; "I think that we produce but little improvement upon them in prison, according to the new system, with our best attention."* According to another†—“There is an elasticity about childhood and youth which it is essential to maintain, but which. ... can hardly be maintained under a system of separation." . . . . A child ought not to be placed in circumstances which improperly interfere with the due formation of its character and the due development of its opening faculties. To this essential process separate confinement. . . . is not adapted." According to the testimony of the medical officer of the Millbank Prison, solitary confinement induces insanity. "It occurred to me that it was wrong to submit juveniles to separate confinement. . . . At the ages of thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen youths are in an excitable state of body and mind; they have not the power of reflection, but they feel intensely; and it seems to me dangerous to subject them at such a time to such a punishment." From the physical injury done to the body, and the unmistakable signs that a process of mental deterioration was going on, the authorities of the Wakefield Prison were compelled to retrace their steps, and ultimately to abjure solitary confinement. Another, in giving evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, in 1850, * Mr. Tracy. + The Rev. Whitworth Russel. Inducing insanity. Predisposing stated that the mischievous and malicious propensities of youths were most annoyingly developed by the system. to mischief. Perplexing difficulties. Fresh expedients wrong. Boys are more inclined to mischief under the new system than they were under the old, because when they are shut up in a separate cell, they amuse themselves by committing all sorts of petty offences, writing their names, scratching off the paint, boring holes in the doors, injuring the gas pipes, and breaking the thermometers."* This expedient, therefore, not only fails to remedy the evil sought to be removed, but predisposes the juvenile prisoner to new offences, stunts and distorts his physical frame, and enfeebles the mind even to the degree of lunacy. So totally unfit is the gaol for youths that have transgressed the laws of their country, that hitherto we have met with no modification that alters its ungenial character. The more effective the confinement the less we found the criminal child fitted to re-enter the world of temptation. The more severe the punishment, the more indifferent, callous, and shameless, has the scourged lad become. The more anxious to seclude, in order to reform the child exposed to contamination within the prison, the wider have we made the range and sphere of moral, intellectual, and physical disorders. Can there be a more ingenious system of judicial torture? Can we suggest aught that will perfect the instrument of legalized cruelty? We think it is possible. Let us see one more device to make the gaol useless as either a deterring or reformatory institution, and more perfect in propagating and magnifying juvenile depravity. § 6. The public prosecution of lads branded them as an additional felons for life. To save a portion of our youthful community from this disgrace and ruin, the Larceny Act was passed in 1847, which gave an increased power of summary conviction to magistrates over youths under fourteen years * Lieutenant E. Hackett. conviction, commitments. of age. But mark the results. The number of commit- Summary ments and recommitments have fearfully increased, show- and short ing that the short imprisonments gradually inure the child to the rigours of the gaol, and deprive him more effectually of all shame of conviction and incarceration. The governor of the Edinburgh Gaol observes that "short commitments of young offenders have the most mischievous effect possible; it inures them to imprisonment by slow degrees, till it becomes no punishment at all." Not only has the number of convictions increased, but, according to the Lord Justice Clerk, “Juvenile offenders are now found in numbers in small, quiet provincial towns, where formerly such were wholly unknown. The short imprisonments to which such offenders are subjected on summary convictions in police courts, or before the sheriffs, generally produce no more effect than to render them utterly indifferent to that punishment. . . . Certainly at present the short imprisonments seem only, in the ordinary cases, to harden the offenders." "Their short sentences," says another, in reference to England, "are in my judgment most objectionable." The impression, therefore, on the reader's mind cannot The inference. fail to be, that the gaol, under no modification whatever, is the place for juvenile offenders; that prison discipline, whether more harsh or more humane, is neither a deterring nor a reformatory process; that on the whole, the gaol, notwithstanding the kind design of the Legislature or our judicial staff; and notwithstanding the Christian patience, forbearance, and godlike solicitude of a race of chaplains, almost unique as to age and country; was, is, and is ever likely to be, the most effectual means of subverting its own intention, and corrupting and ruining the destitute youth of the land. imprison The reader will naturally inquire, If such be the admitted Juvenile state of things, why is the system perpetuated? Are there ment. Why continued t Cost of revenge. no plans suggested to meet the distressing evil? If there are, have experiments been made? If success has attended them, what is the reason why the practice of juvenile imprisonment is not at once and for ever abolished, and reformatory educational means substituted in its place? The thought will occur to the uninitiated, that the inexpensive nature of imprisonment, and the proportionately ruinous character of the expenditure on preventive and reformatory measures, are probably the plea for the continuance of an acknowledged evil. The heart of man has too often been effectually steeled against the sufferings of mankind by the love of gold, that idol of the age. And it is no new thing, to see fathers and mothers take their offspring and offer them with their own hand as sacrifices to this Moloch of Christendom. But in the case before us, the fascinations of gold form no plea to the rejection or disregard of other means for the repression of crime. For the expense to the nation, as things are, is in startling contrast to the economy, not only of preventive measures, but of such reformatory institutions as will, in the course of a few pages, Occupy our attention. § 7. It should be borne in mind that in all our calculations of the cost of a criminal to his country, there must be considered the original cost of each cell, or the interest on the sum originally expended; the expense of detection, apprehension, prosecution, punishment, maintenance, a fractional part of the salaries of prison officials, of the police on guard, of the sundry officers who have to conduct them, either from the provincial gaols to London, or thence to the convict ship; the expense of transportation, the serious cost of detention, punishment, and support, in the penal settlement; and lastly, though not the least consideration, the original loss of property to the community which occasioned the necessity of the extravagant process above described. How cumbrous the machinery that requires How such a heavy, labouring sentence to describe it. ruinous is the vindictive system of dealing with criminals compared with the merciful methods hereafter to be described ! * prisoner's It has been stated on good authority that each cell in Cost of a the Pentonville Prison cost 1617., while those in York cell. Castle cost the country no less thon 1,2007. each; and 1207. are considered as about the lowest figure to be quoted in reference to any other gaol. sion, convic The outlay on detection, apprehension, trial and convic- of apprehention, punishment, and maintenance, varies according to cir- tion, &c. cumstances and the principles of management observed in different houses of correction. The chaplain of the Bath Gaol takes at random a case of 98 children, and states that during a period of about six years these juvenile delinquents appeared in gaol 216 times, and that the aggregate period of their imprisonment amounted to 27 years and 6 months, and that no less a sum than 6,0637. was expended upon them.† The chaplain of Liverpool Gaol, which is stated to be conducted on economical principles, has made a similar calculation, taking as the basis of his tables the history of a batch of 30 juvenile delinquents. Their average period of confinement was 8 years and 6 months; average cost to the borough of Liverpool 327. 15s.: the average cost of 18 of this number was 487., therefore the gross average expenditure by the county was 621. 78. According to a Liverpool magistrate, Pentonville Prison cost 100,000l. or more, and its annual cost to the country is not less than 22,000l. The average expenditure on 14 unselected cases was 637. 88., which may, therefore, be taken as a standard of cost to the community. Now, it has been stated by competent judges, that the cost of a pauper Lieutenant-Colonel Jebb. + Report of Conference. |