indulging their evil passions." * "As a general rule," declares another, "the best prisoner makes the worst free boy, the most difficult and troublesome boy to deal with; because he has been so accustomed to depend upon the mere mechanical arrangements about him, that he finds. self-action almost impossible: such are the most reluctant to work, and the most untrustworthy. Directly they are free, certain dispositions develop themselves, which under the restraint of the prison were mastered and hidden.” † The prison, the model prison at Pentonville, with all its admirably designed appliances, sends out the worst juvenile convicts, for the very reason that its discipline is complete. This witness has come from the remote extremities of our colonial empire. "The opinion of all," says the Bishop of Melbourne, "is the same, that they are the worst class, as a whole class, of the whole community. My feeling is so completely changed, that I should regret the arrival of a ship with convicts as one less mischievous than that of one with pardoned exiles.. All who know any thing of human nature, know that a compulsory abstinence from any sinful indulgence, however long, so far from enabling a man to abstain, when the temptation is again thrown in his way, usually increases his longings for it, and makes him give himself up to it more greedily than ever." Another, who has systematically noted and digested facts as they occurred during a lengthened course of experience in one of our gaols, remarks:-"I have devoted now seven or eight years to this important question, and the experience I have had during that period convinces me that the gaol is not the place for the young offender; and so long as God permits me to maintain that position, I will maintain it by the most undeniable arguments and facts." ||

Report of Conference.
Bishop of Melbourne.

+ Rev. J. Turner. Reformatory Schools. Report of Conference.

|| Rev. W. C. Osborn, chaplain to Bath gaol. Report of Conference.

impossible.

The very nature of a gaol, and the main object of impri- Reformation sonment are things totally incompatible with the reclamation of criminals, especially of juvenile delinquents. "We maintain that the present mode of repressing crime in the persons of juvenile criminals is both ineffective and unjust. It would seem almost a truism that the proofs of reformation in the child must be different to that in the man, inasmuch as the cognizance and perception both of the guilt and its consequences are entirely distinct. We recognize this difference, indeed, in the establishment of schools in prisons for the use of the young. But we have an overpowering weight of evidence to the fact, that it is impossible effectually to combine the school and the gaol. All the impulses that animate a good school are there wanting. The excitement of reward is incompatible with the antecedents of general penalty, and the cheerfulness and geniality, which constitute the very life of childhood, are contradictory to the very notion and purpose of imprisonment." * While for good the gaol is a lamentable failure, re- Ruinous. sidence there is pregnant with the very evils we would eradicate. "The present system deals with children as with adults. All the ceremonies of the law have to be regarded. They alter not. These juveniles are, when in prison, of all its inmates the most troublesome; they strut from cell to chapel and from chapel to cell with such an air of impudence and self-importance as is seldom seen in older criminals. Their manner and their questions in the dock declare how the present mode of discipline operates on their minds. The expression of their conduct, if not of their lips, is of this kind: 'There's the policeman; he must mind and not ask me any questions about my offence. There's the turnkey; he is my servant to bring me my breakfast, dinner, and supper; and if he don't give me

* R. Monckton Milnes, Esq., M.P. Report of Conference.

A criminal's career after discharge.

Prisons deter not. Recommitments.

enough, I'll send for the scales to weigh my bread and meat. There's the schoolmaster; he must give me instruction and supply me with books. There's the doctor; he must come and ask me how I am twice a week, and every day that I want him. There's the chaplain; he must visit me frequently. And the governor must not neglect me: and the magistrates, they come twice a week, and ask me if I have any complaint to make. The officers are obliged to mind what they are about.' This swells the frog into

an ox."*

If such be the effect upon juvenile delinquents while within the walls of the prison, what can we expect from the youth once more deprived of such flattering attentions, and at the same time free to exhibit latent or dormant faculties? "What, I would ask, can it be but ruinous and disastrous, as our gaol returns exhibit? . . I can illustrate, from my own inquiries, the after-career of some of these offenders. I take, then, a page at random from the school register of four years ago, and I find that of the thirty whose names are upon that page-not selected cases, but taken in the order in which they came to gaol-eighteen have been transported; two are now in gaol, having been frequently recommitted in the mean time; one out of the thirty is in employment; one has emigrated; two have died, one immediately after having been discharged, the other shot in the streets during a public disturbance, leaving six out of the thirty whose history I have not been able to trace.” †

§ 3. The above disclosures show plainly enough that reformation is absolutely out of the question. But if from choice morality is not studied by the class, are their minds so impressed with seasonable and salutary dread of imprisonment as to deter from crime, or at least to induce more caution and reserve in criminal pursuits? There are some

* Mr. Osborn of Bath. Reformatory Schools.

+ Report of Conference, &c.

to whom even these were sufficiently gratifying results,
could they be adduced. But the number of recommitments
destroys even such a view in favour of the continuance of
the system. According to the chaplain of Bath Gaol, one
batch of 98 children underwent during six years 216 im-
prisonments. The testimony of the head master of the
Sutcliffe Industrial School in Bath is to the same effect.
In a manuscript report for the last few months, it is stated,
that three out of every five lads in that school have been in
gaol from one to ten times. The chaplain of Liverpool
Gaol has stated, that "out of 26 females, all of whom com-
menced as juveniles, he found that 25 had been in gaol
on the average seven times each; the other he did not think
it fair or proper to bring forward as an average example,
because she had been 57 times in gaol.
He found
that taking 42 individuals, male adults, at this moment
[1850] in Liverpool Gaol, who were first received there as
juvenile thieves, the aggregate commitments amount to 401
or 9 times each on an average. The average career of
crime was five years and four months." The benevolent
magistrate of Liverpool, in a letter to the town council in
1850, gives the history of a juvenile delinquent, which is
thus summed up by him :-"Thus, at the age of fourteen,
he has been twenty-four times in custody; he has been five
times discharged, twice imprisoned for fourteen days, once
for one month, once for two months, six times for three
months, and tried and convicted, and sentenced to four
months' imprisonment and to be twice whipped.'

Such is the evidence afforded on all hands of the abso- The best gaol a bad lute failure of juvenile imprisonment, as a deterring agent. school. It may be asked, Does this repetition of committals arise from any defect in the plans of confinement? from want of discipline? from a deficiency of officers and superintendents of the prison cell? Now it happens that the best conducted gaols, on the ordinary principles of imprisonment,

Official opinion.

are as productive of the very evils we would eradicate. Nor is this an unexplainable fact. While such institutions continue prisons, imprisonment will propagate crime. Of Pentonville we have already spoken. The Liverpool Gaol has been pronounced an admirable institution on the old system. Its worthy chaplain and one of the best of magistrates have done all that could be devised, to render it an efficient instrument for the repression of crime and the reformation of the offender. And what is the result? The chaplain says " I say it advisedly, if it had been the object in Liverpool to devise a scheme for the promotion rather than the prevention of juvenile crime, no contrivance could have been hit upon better calculated to accomplish that object than the Liverpool Gaol. And yet that gaol has been held up as one of the best regulated in the kingdom, under the old system, and that, I believe, with justice; and if these are the results of one of the best regulated, I leave you to judge what must be the case of others, not so well conducted." And again :-" Although singled out for special commendation by the inspector of prisons, the Liverpool Gaol is the most effectual institution that can be devised for transmitting and propagating crime." Mr. Osborn speaks highly of the Bath Gaol, of which he is the esteemed chaplain. His words are "If any gaol might have been expected to have succeeded with prisoners of an early age, it was the New Bath Prison, where every facility has been supplied, and no labour was spared in the endeavour to inculcate better principles and habits, especially in children; nor were they on their discharge from confinement entirely disregarded." Notwithstanding this admission, the result of Mr. Osborn's long: experience is" once in prison, always in prison:" and it is his strong conviction that," although the system adopted at Bath is as good as, if not better than, that adopted elsewhere, yet our treatment of the poor, destitute creatures