The Daily News. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15. PRISON REFORM IN ENGLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 134, 15 September 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15. PRISON REFORM IN ENGLAND.

Now that the Crimes Act Amendment Act is being carefully discussed in New Zealand, it is interesting to know what British statesmen are endeavouring to do in the matter of prison reform. It is admitted that, in comparison with the methods of some nations, those of Britain are not ■first-class, but seeing that the methods of the United States have 'been quoted very frequently lately, it is worth while remembering that the level of that country in the treatment of wrongdoers is savagely vengeful, that abuses are commoner there than elsewhere, and that the Elmira reformatory, for which the "patients" are carefully selected, represents the only advanced phase of the work undertaken 'in the States. Mr. Winston Churchill has addressed! himself to an examination and criticism of English uses and abuses in the way of prison management, and in a remarkably cogent and far-seeing speech dealt first with the prevention of persons from being unnecessarily committed to prison for non-payment of fines. The whole plan of making fines or imprisonment alternative is open to criticism, and often yields glaring instances of "one law for the rich and another for the poor." But its method of administration—the demand that a fine be paid on the spot—makes it much worse. Many a man who in a week could raise the money goes to prison and gets the gaol taint for life because he cannot raise it in a few minutes, Mr. Churchill promises- a short Act to give such people a little time for payment. Then he turned to youthful offenders—under 21, The Children Act has done much to save froin needless brandings with the prison stigma, but Mr. Churchill is inclined to carry it fur- | ther by inventing some species of un- ' pleasant but beneficial discipline—a sort I of defaulters' drill—outside of prisons altogether. Something like 5000 lads every years make their first acquaintance with gaol for relatively trifling offences, and if they could be saved becomingi actual gaolbirds their reclamation would be far easier. With regard to the regime of the prisons themselves, the Home Secretary had a number of proposals. Solitary confinement is to be reduced in all but a few classified cases to one month only. The prisoners are to have occasional concerts, and a lecture once every three months, to give them something rational to think about. Lastly, it is hoped for ex-prisoners to abolish the ticket-of-leave system. Instead a semi-official organisation is to be established co-ordinating the prisoners' aid societies, which is to prevent over--1 lapping and to secure that every person leaving gaol has a society to look after him. For this last purpose an Exchequer grant of £7500 lias actually been obtained, and within a reasonable time the whole ticket-of-leave system, which has provided! subjects for countless melodramas, will probably disappear for ever. Mr. Churchill is also making it a part of the regular system to modify the ordinary harshness of prison rules in favor of persons "not guilty of offences involving moral turpitude." That, as he explained, is to cover in all ordinary circumstances the Suffragist, the Passive Resister, and political prisoners generally. Furthermore, he is making arrangements which will extend the Borstal system so as to make it practically universal for young persons whenever j they have to go to prison at all; and he is watching keenly—though not. it would ; seem, very sympathetically—the working of the Prevention of Crimes Act, which introduced "preventive detention" for tie confirmed and habitual criminal. His statement that "preventive detention is penal servitude in all its essence " is quite true of preventive detention as carried out so far under the English prison authorities, but it is not true of it as carried out in a more enlightened manner. Enough has been said to show that prison reform may expect from Mr. Churchill a considerable impetus. It was the Royal Commission which Mr. Asquith apppointed when he was at the Home Office thiat gave it its first start in recent times, and. since then its progress, though not obtrusive, has been very substantial. But the obstacles which retard it in our country are not easily overcome. Partly they ar,e ito be found in our institutions, partly in material things. Few countries, for example, give their judges bo much latitude in apportioning sentences; and yet our judges are not expected to have, nor in nearly all cases have they, the slightest familiarity with the science of penology. So, too, with our bricks and mortar; the very unit of all our prisons—the cell—is utterly wrong. The essential difference between a room and a cell is that a cell's only window is near the ceiling, and nothing—not even the sky—can be seen out of it. So unsentimental a man as Sir Robert Anderson pointed out years ago the entirely bad effect of this on a prisoner's |mind, and l there-are many countries, which we think backward, which have long discarded it. But changes which would go to the root of our institutions, like an interference with the discretion or an alteration of the character of our or like the remodelling of

our prisons, would entail enormous material expense, cannot easily be made in a hurry. The great thing, is to broaden the direction and quicken the recent rate of progress, and that Mr. Churchill seems determined to do.