THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMINALS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2111, 19 January 1886, Page 4

THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMINALS.

The annual supper for the criminal classes took place 911 Monday November 30fch in the mission chapel, Little Wildstreet, Drury-lane, under the auspices of the St Giles's Christian mission. There were upwards of 200 discharged prisoners present, all having been convicted of felony, and many of them having served terms of penal servitude. A substantial meal was provided foi them in two large rooms adjoining the hall, to which they were afterwards invited in order to attend a meeting presided over by Lord Coleridge. Mr Hatton (the superintendant) made a preliminary statement as to the work of the St. Giles's mission during the past year, from which it appeared that the number of prisoners met at the gates of Cold bath-fields, Holloway, and Wandsworth prisions was 18,383, of whom 14,352 accepted breakfast, and 4,191 signed the temperance pledge. In addition there were sent to the colonies 109 ; to sea, 28 ; work was obtained on land for 331 ; there were sent home to friends 283 ; and 3,392 were assisted with money, clothes, tools, &c. Besides, 780 convicts received their gratuities to the amount of £3,770 through the society. Lord Coleridge, in a long speech, said there should be very much greater leniency introduced into the scale of our punishments. The severity of many of our punishments and the lengthy period of imprisonment to which, as a general rule, convicts were subject, weie, in his opiuion, — and he had thought a great deal about the matter — productive of almost unmixed evil. The constant practice— an unfortunate one, he thought— of sentencing to very long and heavy periods of imprisonment persons who were guilty of very trivial offences, if they were repeated, was a very great mistake. Petty offences and trivial offences, though they were often repeated, remained petty offences and trivial offences, and he had often himself had his mind filled with astonishment, aud his heart with pity and dismay, when he had had a man brought before him for sentence whose prison records showed that he had spent large portions of his life — he spoke by the card — years and years of his existence either in prison or in penal servitude for offences the gravity of which in the dignity of crime hardly led to the height of the level of a petty larceny. The weapon of punishment broke in the hand when one had to inflict the same penalty upon the atrocious crime and the trumpery peccadillo, it might be, 20 times repeated. On his visit to Amirica he saw on one of the islands near New York a sort of home for girta aud boys, who were cent there for minor offences, which would condemn many a poor little fellow here to be a felon for life. This kind of institution might be copied here for older offenders. It ought not to be impossible to rouse in the worst of men some sense of religion.

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There are about 14,000 licensed cabdrivers in London. It is estimated that there are on an average 100,000 fares daily. Foety-six miles of new streets and squaie§ were handed over to police protection in London during 1884.