PRISON LIFE IN FRANCE.

Kumara Times, Issue 665, 14 November 1878, Page 3

PRISON LIFE IN FRANCE.

There • are 21 central prisons in France for prisoners with sentences of five years and over. The cell system is adopted in prisons for the detention Of prisoners not Bent up for more than a year and a day,' but in the central prisons as in>uiy as 100 sleep in one ward, certain of their number bains' responsible for the preservation of Order* The dormitories are lighted, and there are openings from the galleries through which.the guards may inspect them. By day the men work in ateliers, 50 or 100 in each. Shoes, chairs, woven fabrics, buttons, urn* brella-ferrnles, Chinese lanterns, <fec., are manufactured, and such light work as glossing paper, sewing copy-books, and making hair ornaments, in done. The work is let to contractors by tariff fixed by the local Chamber of Commerce, to prevent any undue competition with free'labour. Half of the profits of the prisoner's work goes' to the State; he is allowed to spend a quarter in procuring special articles of diet, &c, and the remaining quarter is paid to him on leaving, so' that a discharged convict often finds himself with from 100 to 300 dollars cash capital A large proportion of the prisoners use this in setting themselves up in trade or in procuring passage to other lands. These rewards of industrial labour, together with the industrial training itself, constitute together the main and tolerably effeotual counterbalance to the otherwise grave evils of associa*tion. The element of hope i«; always prominent in French prisons, and ifr is the sheet, anchor of their administration. A visitor to La San te, at' Paris, observed in the first .cell he inspected a' table on which lay a pipe :of tobacco, a: half bottle of wine, and a novel.