BRITISH PRISONS OF TO-DAY
Steady progress toward improved methods--Legislation to secure
uniformity and proper principles of management--First effort to
bring all local jurisdiction into line--Decision that all prisons
must be under state control--Unification of system--Burden borne by
the public exchequer--Remarkable results--Marked diminution in
number of jail inmates--How convict labour has enriched the
nations--Results at Portland, Chatham, Dartmoor--Extension of
output--Chattenden and Borstal.
Forty years have elapsed since England was forced to revise her methods
of penal treatment, and to replace the system of transportation beyond
the seas with home establishments, rather hastily improvised to meet a
sudden demand. Reference has already been made to the institution of
"penal servitude," so-called, the process of expiation to which
condemned felons were subjected in the newly devised state prisons. The
flaws and failures that became prominent in the earlier phases of the
system have also been touched upon, as well as the salutary changes
introduced from time to time by the legislature. Year after year
steadfast and consistent efforts have been made to improve and develop,
to remove blots in administration, to remedy shortcomings; to reform
offenders, while obliging them to labour to recoup expenditure and to
secure thereby some restitution from them. A brief survey will show the
existing conditions of the British penal system of to-day.
The chief reason of the merit of the British system is, that it is the
growth of time, the product of experience. In the many changes
introduced in this century, the great aim and object has been
progressive improvement. The movement has all been forward. There has
been no slackness in correcting errors and remedying abuses since John
Howard struck the key-note of indignant protest. Reform may not always
have gone hand in hand with suggestion, but that has been because of the
quasi-independence of the prison jurisdictions. British prisons in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were largely controlled by local
authorities upon no very uniform or effective principles, although act
after act of Parliament was passed for the purpose of betterment. In
1823 and 1824 two acts first laid down the rule that health, moral
improvement and regular labour were as important objects in prison
maintenance as safe custody. At the same time, some attempt at
classification was made, and it was ordered, for the first time, that
female prisoners should be controlled only by female officers. In 1835 a
fresh act insisted that all prison rules should be subjected to the
approval of the Secretary of State; a proper dietary was made
essential, without the "stimulating luxury" of tobacco. Classification,
too, was again tried, but without good results, and the rule of
separation at all times except during divine service, labour or
instruction, was gradually adopted in theory and practice. Inspectors of
prisons were appointed to exact obedience to the new laws. In 1839, an
act permitted, but did not actually order, the confinement of each
prisoner in a separate cell. The dimensions of these cells were
stipulated, and it was insisted that they should be certified as fit for
occupation. A surveyor-general of prisons was also appointed to assist
and advise the Secretary of State as to prison construction.
The first substantial progress was made in the building of Pentonville,
a prison which has served as a model for all prisons. Although copied in
a measure from the old Roman monastery prison of San Michele, and
following in design the famous Cherry Hill Penitentiary of Philadelphia,
Pentonville was really a type in itself, and embraced so many
excellences that it has never yet been greatly improved upon. In the six
years following the establishment of Pentonville, fifty-four new prisons
were built in England, providing cells for eleven thousand prisoners;
but in 1850 a select committee of the House of Commons reported that
several prisons were still in a very unsatisfactory condition, and that
proper punishment, separation, or reformation in them was impossible.
Parliament even then was strongly urged to entrust the supreme control
of all prisons to one central authority, wholesome advice which was not
accepted for nearly thirty years. But, although convicts sentenced to
longer terms, which were usually carried out beyond the seas in the
manner described in the earlier chapters, obtained much attention, the
successive recommendations to improve the small outlying gaols, for
short terms, were very imperfectly adopted.
The next great step was the Prison Act of 1865, which grew out of the
report from a committee of the House of Lords, and which strongly
condemned the lack of uniformity in the prison buildings, and in the
punishments inflicted. Many of the practices which still prevailed even
at that late date (1865) were really a disgrace to our civilisation. In
some of the prisons the inmates lay two in a bed in dormitories without
light, ventilation or control. Warders were afraid to enter them after
dark. There was no uniformity in labour, or in the hours in which it was
performed. In one prison the inmates lay in bed for fifteen hours daily.
One of these gaols, which existed until the passing of the Act of 1865,
and which was situated in the heart of a densely populated seaport town,
has been described by its last governor. It was an ancient edifice,
consisting of four parallel two-storied blocks. The lower story opened
on a corridor, the windows of which were unglazed and communicated with
the outer air. Above each cell door was a barred opening without glass,
which served as a ventilator. In wet weather the rain poured into the
passage; in a snow storm the snow flakes drifted through the
cell-ventilators upon the bed which was just beneath, and which was
often covered in the morning with snow an inch or two deep. There was no
heating apparatus, and the place was desperately cold in winter. On the
first floor there were a number of larger cells in which as many as
seven prisoners were associated together, day and night, so crowded that
the beds were stowed upon the floor, while hammocks were also stretched
across them above. Sunday was the worst day of the week in this horrible
old prison. After morning service, the prisoners took their dinners with
them to their cells and were then and there locked up till the following
morning. No one could get out, even if he were dying; there was no
communication with officers or others outside. Here, in an atmosphere
laden with fetid exhalations, amid filth of all kinds, the wretched
prisoners were imprisoned for eighteen consecutive hours. These modern
"black holes" were far worse than that of Calcutta in that their
unfortunate inmates had daylight in which to observe with loathing and
disgust the indecencies which surrounded them. Nor was it only in the
accommodation provided that these poor creatures suffered. They were
continually ill-used by their warders, who harassed and harried them at
every turn. Each officer had a prisoner to wait upon him as a personal
attendant, called his "lackey," who was always at his heels serving him
hand and foot, and performing every menial office except that of
carrying his keys. The outgoing governor who escorted his successor (my
informant) around the gaol was imbued with the same brutal, reckless
spirit, which he displayed by rushing into a cell, seizing a youthful
prisoner by the shoulders, and shaking him violently, after which he
threw him roughly upon the ground with the brief explanation, "You've
got to show them you're master sometimes." The boy had not been guilty
of any misconduct whatever.
In this gaol, all kinds of work was performed for the private benefit of
the officers, a practice very generally prevalent in the gaols until a
much later date. It was of the governor's perquisites to employ
prisoners for his own behoof. There was jubilation in his family when a
clever tailor or seamstress "came in;" new suits were at once cut out
and made for the governor, his wife or his children. His house was
fitted and half furnished by prisoners; they made arm-chairs,
picture-frames, boot-racks. In one prison I heard of an excellent
carriage constructed by a clever coach-builder who had gotten into
trouble, and whose forfeited hours were thus utilised for the governor
and not for the taxpayers. In another gaol an unexpected inspection
revealed the mouth of a mysterious pipe leading from the kitchen, which
when followed to its outlet was found to convey the grease and
scourings straight to a flower bed in the governor's garden.
This deplorable state of affairs continued without change long after
1865. Twelve years later the uniformity sought by the act of that year
had not been secured. Justices had not in every case realised their
duties and responsibilities. Many prisons remained defective. All
differed in their treatment of prisoners, and the criminal classes were
themselves aware of the differences. It was a common practice for
intending offenders to avoid a locality where the gaol discipline was
severe. To secure the same measure of punishment in each institution was
all the more important since criminals had learned to avail themselves
of the many modern facilities for travelling from place to place, and
crime was no longer localised. The same reason added another argument in
favour of making the support of prisons an imperial rather than a local
charge. It was a little unfair, too, that a district which had already
suffered by the depredations of an evil-doer should bear the heaviest
part of the expense of his correction. With these, there was a still
stronger reason for concentration. Some relief of local taxation was
earnestly desired, and the assumption by the public exchequer of prison
expenditure seemed to promise this in an easy and substantial way, more
particularly as the transfer of control would be accompanied by a
revision of the means, and followed by a diminution in the number of
prisons required. Such arguments fully justified Mr. (afterward
Viscount) Cross in introducing the measure known as the Prison Act of
1877, which was passed that year, and contemplated great changes in the
system as it then was; the first and chief being the transfer and
control of all local prisons to a board of commissioners acting for the
state.
All these have now taken effect, and after a test of twenty years may
fairly be judged by the results achieved. Certainly the uniformity
desired has at last been attained. Every prisoner now finds exactly the
same treatment, according to his class and sentence, from Land's End to
the Orkney Isles. Whether only an accused person, a debtor,
misdemeanant, or condemned felon, he is kept strictly apart, occupying a
cell to himself, the dimensions of which assure him a minimum
air-content of 800 cubic feet, and which has been duly certified by one
of the government prison inspectors as fit for his occupation, being
lighted, heated, ventilated, and provided with bell communications,
which are electric in some of the new prisons. From the moment he passes
into the prison until he again finds himself on the right side of the
gate, he is under exactly the same discipline, whether he is in the gaol
of Bodmin, Newcastle, Norwich, Liverpool or Carlisle. Everywhere his
bath awaits him; his prison clothing, if he is convicted, is furnished
him; his first and every succeeding meal is based upon a dietary framed
by medical experts after the most mature deliberation. His day's task is
fixed. If he is able-bodied, he must do six hours at more or less severe
labour, breaking stones, making cocoa mats with a heavy beater, making
sacks, digging, pumping, and so forth. This, the most irksome phase of
his prison life, continues for one month, or more exactly, until he has
earned 224 marks in the first series of the progressive stages which
have been ingeniously adopted to secure industry and good conduct. Every
prisoner holds in his own hands the ability to modify the penal
character of his imprisonment, and by the exercise of these two
qualities may gradually earn privileges and improve his position.
Whatever the cause--and it is easier to state the effect than apportion
it among the causes that have produced it, there has been a steady
diminution in the numbers sentenced to imprisonment, as compared with
increased population in the years succeeding 1878, when the new system
came into force. In that year the population of England and Wales stood
at twenty-five millions and 10,218 was the number imprisoned of both
sexes. In 1904 the general population was 33,763,468, while no more than
seventy-nine hundred were imprisoned. And during the intervening years
there has been a continuous falling off in the number of imprisonments.
"It certainly seems justifiable to infer from these figures that our
penal reformatory system has been made effective," says Du Cane, in his
"Punishment and Prevention of Crime;" "and the remarkably steady and
sustained decrease ... must be considered to show that recent
legislation, with which it so remarkably coincides in point of time, has
in principle and execution not only completely succeeded in promoting
uniformity, economy, and improved administration, but also in that which
is the main purpose of all--the repression of crime." The decrease is
even more remarkable in the convict prisons, those which receive the
more serious offenders, sentenced to penal servitude.
The convict population of Great Britain is now just about half what it
was some five and twenty years ago. Going back to 1828, when the
population of the country was barely fifteen millions, there were in
all,--in the penal colonies at the Antipodes, at Gibraltar and Bermuda,
the Hulks at home and the Millbank Penitentiary, just fifty thousand
convicts, or ten times what the total is to-day with a population of
nearly thirty millions. Carrying the comparison a little further, there
were 3,611 sentenced to transportation in 1836; in 1846, 3,157; in 1856,
2,715; in 1866, 2,016 (combined with penal servitude); in 1876, 1,753 to
penal servitude alone; in 1886, 910. In 1891 only 751 imprisonments are
recorded. This progressive decrease is doubtless largely due to the
growth of that more humane spirit which has in recent years mitigated
the severity of punishment, and which prompts the judges to avoid the
heavier penalties, as is shown, for instance, by the fact that in 1836
there were 740 life sentences, while in 1891 there were only four. It
may be attributed also to the admitted punitive efficacy of penal
servitude. That it is sufficient to visit even serious offences with
shorter terms, a practice much facilitated by the recent reduction of
the minimum period from five to three years, is amply shown by the
record.
A few words must be devoted to the work of the convicts in the great
British prisons. At Portland, during the years from 1848 to 1871 the
convicts quarried no fewer than 5,803,623 tons of stone, all of which
was utilised in the now famous breakwater, a stone dam in the sea nearly
two miles in length and running into water fifty or sixty feet deep. The
now presumably impregnable defences of the island, Portland Bill, the
great works on the Verne, the barracks, batteries and casemates, were
executed by convicts, who, as these works progressed, performed all the
subsidiary services of carpentering, plate-laying, forging, and casting
the ironwork. The enlargement of Chatham dockyard, a great feat of
engineering skill, begun in 1856, was accomplished by convict labour.
The site of St. Mary's Island, a waste of treacherous shore so nearly
submerged by the tide that the few sheep that inhabited it were to be
seen daily huddled together at the topmost point at high water, is now
occupied by three magnificent basins capable of floating almost the
entire British fleet. In fourteen years the convicts made one hundred
and two million bricks for the retaining walls of these basins and
excavated all of their muddy contents. The first, or repairing basin,
has a surface of twenty-one acres; the second, or factory basin, twenty
acres; the third, or fitting-out basin, twenty-eight acres. These basins
were skilfully contrived to utilise the old watercourses which
intersected the island. The bottom of the basins is twelve feet below
the old river bed, and thirty-two feet below St. Mary's Island, which
has been raised about eight feet by dumping on it the earth excavated
from the basins. The whole island has been surrounded by a sea-wall and
embankment nearly two miles in length, principally executed by convict
labour. Work of a very similar nature and extent has been carried out at
Portsmouth, and the enlarged dockyard there was given over to the
admiralty a few years ago.
Dartmoor was an ideal penal settlement: a wild, almost barbarous place
when the labour of the convicts was first applied to its development--to
fencing, draining, making roads and parade-grounds, and to converting
the old buildings into suitable receptacles for themselves and their
kind. But the eventual employment of the prisoners was to be the farming
of the surrounding moorland as soon as it was reclaimed; and this work
has in effect occupied the Dartmoor convicts for more than forty years.
What they have accomplished is best told by experts. The following is
extracted from a report in a recent number of the Royal Agricultural
Society's journal.
"The management of the prison farm, Princetown," reads the report, "has
converted a large tract of poor waste land into some of the most
productive enclosures in the kingdom. The farm, which lies in the wilds
of Dartmoor, at an elevation of some fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred
feet above the sea, ... comprises in all two thousand acres, the whole
of which was mere common or unenclosed waste land prior to 1850.... The
land is divided into square fields of from fifteen to twenty acres by
high stone walls, built of granite boulders raised in the prison
quarries or from the land as the work of reclamation proceeds. An
excellent system of reclamation, with scientific rotation of crops, has
been devised. If the herbage fails, or becomes unsatisfactory, the land
is again dug up ... but so good has been the management ... that the
greater portions of the pasture laid within the last fifteen or twenty
years are now in far too good a condition to require rebreaking. One
field which twenty years ago was mostly rushes is now able to carry a
bullock per acre through the summer. No purer or cleaner pastures are to
be found anywhere.... Sixty-seven acres of meadow land have been laid
out for irrigation and utilisation of the sewage from the prison
establishment, which at times numbers upwards of one thousand persons. A
dairy herd of forty-five cows is kept, and all the cows are reared....
A flock of four hundred sheep, 'Improved Dartmoors,' is kept and has
frequently been successful in the local show-yards. The wool, for so
high a district, is remarkably good and of long staple. Pony mares and
their produce are run on the fields. One of the ponies bred on Dartmoor
won first prize in its class at the Royal Show at Plymouth. Thirty acres
of garden are devoted to the growth of garden vegetables, of which all
kinds are grown, and much success has been obtained with celery and
cucumbers. The whole of the work is done by convicts, without the aid of
horses except for carting."
A great extension of convict labour has been seen in recent years. It
has been employed in novel ways which would have been impossible but for
the excellence of the present prison organisation and of the discipline
now enforced. In 1876 a small prison for one hundred inmates was erected
at Chattenden, near Upnor, on the north bank of the Medway. It was
intended to house convicts to be engaged in constructing new magazines
at Chattenden for the war department. The prison was built by a
detachment of prisoners sent across the river from Chatham convict
prison, and then by tramway to the site of the proposed work. The
tramway passed through dense woods, and the site of the prison was
surrounded by thick undergrowth. These seemingly hazardous operations
were carried out without a casualty of any kind; no gang chains were
used; no escapes, successful or frustrated, were recorded. The work was
continued for nearly ten years, when the magazines were finished, and
the prison, which throughout had been treated as a branch of the great
headquarters prison at Chatham, was closed. During these ten years,
besides the prison buildings, this small party had put up five large
bomb-proof magazines, in addition to the formation and drainage of the
roads, traverses and slopes adjoining. The experiment at Chattenden
afforded an example of the use to which convict labour can be put, and
of the circumstances under which comparatively small works can be
undertaken by a small body of convicts in a separate prison erected for
the purpose. A number of the buildings, being easily removable, have
since been taken down to be otherwise made use of.
It is only fair to observe here that the same experiment had been made
under the Austro-Hungarian government by M. Tauffer. This eminent prison
official had recommended the adoption of the "progressive system" as far
back as 1866, and had carried it out under his own direction at
Leopoldstadt and Lepoglava, where his prisoners were employed on outside
labour at the rate of thirty or even forty to each overseer, and yet no
escapes occurred. These prisoners built another prison at a distance
from Lepoglava, and were lodged for the purpose in sheds and outhouses
beyond the prison walls. The doors were not even locked at night; there
were no bolts or bars, the only barrier to escape being the rule that no
one should leave the building after the hour for retiring at night.
The work at Chattenden had, however, been preceded by other similar and
more extensive undertakings in England. The first was the preparation of
a new and very simple prison edifice at Borstal, near Rochester; the
second, the erection of the great separate prison at Wormwood Scrubs,
with which I was myself closely identified from the beginning. The
prison at Borstal was to house convicts who were to be employed under
the war department in building fortifications for the defence of Chatham
arsenal, and indirectly of London. As a preliminary measure, a boundary
fence was erected at Borstal around the site of the new prison, and this
work--but this alone--was performed by free labour, the very timber for
the fence having been prepared in the prison at Chatham, four miles
distant, which served as general centre and headquarters for the Borstal
as well as the Chattenden prison. Parties of selected convicts were
despatched daily to Borstal, under escort, of course, but without
chains, and travelled back and forth in open vans. Temporary huts were
put up for cooking, storage and the accommodation of the guard, and
within sixteen weeks the prison buildings were so far advanced that
forty cells were ready for occupation by prisoners, and the
establishment was then regularly opened as a prison. During this
sixteen weeks there had been no accidents, no escapes, no misconduct.
The convicts employed in this really "intermediate stage," having a
larger amount of license and liberty than Sir Walter Crofton had ever
dreamed of giving a prisoner, had behaved in the most exemplary manner.
Within a year afterward, when the number of convicts had gradually
increased to more than two hundred, all necessary buildings had been put
up to accommodate a total population of five hundred prisoners.
The completion of the prison left the convicts free to carry out the
works for which they had been brought to Borstal. But the very nature of
these works was such as to startle prison administration of the old
school, and to forbid, at first thought, the employment of convicts upon
them. The site of the proposed forts was quite in the open country, and
the first of them, Luton, at least two miles from Borstal prison. How
were the convicts to be conveyed to and fro, without loss of time,
without unnecessary fatigue, and above all, without risk of losing half
the number by the way? A novel plan was boldly but happily conceived,
and its absolutely successful adoption constitutes an epoch in prison
history. It was decided to lay down a narrow gauge railway, along the
line the forts were intended to cover, and send the prisoners to their
work by train. Part of this plan was the invention of a special kind of
railway-carriage, constructed with a view to safe custody, and this
very unique and ingenious contrivance has since been constantly
employed. These carriages are small, open, third-class carriages, with a
sliding gate of iron bars. When the train is made up, a chain passes
along the exterior of these gates, and it is padlocked at each end. The
warders on duty occupy raised seats at each end of the train, and have
the convicts under supervision continually. The compartments hold from
eight to ten men each, and a train-load is made up of from eighty to a
hundred convicts. The engines used are the once famous little
locomotives that were sent out to the Sudan for service on the
Suakim-Berber railway. Extreme simplicity characterises all these
arrangements, yet they are perfectly suitable and quite sufficient. The
same device was tried with success at Portsmouth convict prison, for the
conveyance of convicts to Whale Island, distant a mile or more from the
prison.
The effectual guarding of the convicts when at work was, however, a
matter of equal importance. This, with the experience of many years
gained in all varieties of outdoor employment, has been reduced almost
to a science at Borstal. The works are enclosed by a wall ten feet high.
There is a ditch on the inner side, and there are wire entanglements on
the inner side of the ditch. The convict-laden train runs within the
palisading and its passengers are marched to the various points on which
they are employed. Some of these are in the open beyond the palisading;
but outside all, on a wide outer circumference, are sentries of the
civil guard, on high platforms at regular intervals, commanding the
ground between them. No fugitive could pass them unobserved, as they are
on such a radius that they would have the fleeing convict a long time
under their eyes while he was approaching. In addition to this, an
elaborate system of signaling has been devised by means of semaphores at
the highest points. These are worked by good-service convicts, men in
the last year of their sentence, who can be trusted to use field-glasses
and to communicate promptly any news that has to be sent on. In this way
escapes are signaled, or a call for help made, if help be required, in
event of disturbance among the parties at work. Escapes have no doubt
occurred at Borstal, but they have been few and far between, always
resulting in recapture, except in one or two instances.
Thus we have traced, in this and the preceding volume, the course of the
beginning and the development of the prison system of Great Britain.
Much that we now rightly consider inhuman marked its early history, in
common with the conduct of all prisons of that early day. The period of
deportation is certainly gloomy enough, until we stop to consider the
splendid secondary results that have grown out of it in the building up
of an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth in the southern hemisphere. The prison
system of Great Britain, as it is to-day established, is perhaps as
advanced as any in the world, while the future promises advance and
improvement wherever the one is called for and the other is possible.