THE FRENCH PRISON SYSTEM.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 811, 6 December 1882, Page 2

THE FRENCH PRISON SYSTEM.

Writing of French houses of correction, the Cornhill states that the “ prisoners are allowed to smoke in Parisian gaols, and a very sensible provision this is, for it prevents the illicit traffic in tobacco which brings so many prisoners and warders to trouble in English prisons, and it also supplies a ready means of punishing a refractory prisoner. Frenchmen decline to admit that order cannot be kept in a gaol without corporal punishment. As a rule French prisoners behave exceedingly well, because they know that they can greatly alleviate the hardships of their position by so doing. For a first offence, a man’s tobacco and wine will be cut off for a week; for a second he may be forbidden to purchase anything at the canteen for a month; if he perseveres in his folly he will be prohibited from working, that is, from earning money, and will be locked up in a cell to endure the misery of utter solitude and idleness. If this severe measure fails and the man becomes obstreperous, he will be straight-waist-coated and put into a dark padded cell, where he may scream and kick at th« walls to his heart’s content. To these rational methods of coercion the most stubborn natures generally yield. It must be confessed, however, that there are certain desperate characters who delight in giving trouble, and who, untamed by repeated punishment will often commit murderous assaults upon warders, chaplain, or governor out of sheer bravado. It would really be a mercy to flog these men, for a timely infliction of the lash would frighten them into good behaviour, and often save them from the worse fate of life long reclusion. There are no cranks or treadwheels in French prisons. These barbarous methods for wasting the energies of men in unprofitable labor are condemned by the good sense of a people who hold that it is for the public interest as well as the good of the prisoners themselves the men in confinement should be so employed as to make them understand the blessedness of honest labor. In their treatment of untried prisoners, too, the French are much more humane than we. What can be more cruel and foolish than to force an untried man, who may be innocent, to spend several months in complete idleness, as is done

in-England? A Frenchman who has a trade that can be followed in prison may work at it in his cell, pending his trial, as if'he were at home. Journeymen tailors, shoemakers, watchmakers, gilders, carvers, painters on porcelain atisl enamel, etc., continue working for their employers (unless, of course, they are desperate men whom it would be dahgerous to trust with tools), and it is a touching sight enough on visiting day, to see the prisoners send out little parcels of money, for their wives, from whom they are separated by gratings. The : same sight can be witnessed in the prisons of convicted offenders. Many prisoners will deny themselves every luxury' procurable at the canteen in order to give the whole of their earnings to their wives.