either at a distance from each other, or in such a state of juxtaposition that they might be under the same governor. To the jail should be committed all persons accused of capital offences, whose trials would come on at the Assizes; to the house of correction, all offenders whose cases would be cognizable at the Quarter-sessions. Sentence of imprisonment in the house of correction, after trial, should carry with it hard labour; sentence of imprisonment in the jail, after trial, should imply an exemption from compulsory labour. There should be no compulsory labour in jails-only in houses of correction. In using the terms Fail and House of Correction, we should always attend to these distinctions. Prisoners for trial should not only not be compelled to labour, but they should have every indulgence shown to them compatible with safety. No chains-much better diet than they commonly have-all possible access to their friends and relationsand means of earning money if they choose it. The broad and obvious distinction between prisoners before and after trial should constantly be attended to; to violate it is gross tyranny and cruelty. The men The jails for men and women should be so far separated, that nothing could be seen or heard from one to the other. should be divided into two classes: 1st, those who are not yet tried; 2dly, those who are tried and convicted. The first class should be divided into those who are accused as misdemeanants and as felons; and each of these into first misdemeanants and second misdemeanants, men of better and worst character; and the same with felons. The second class should be divided into, Ist, persons condemned to death; 2dly, persons condemned for transportation; 3dly, first class confined or men of the best character under sentence of confinement; 4thly, second confined, or men of worst character under sentence of confinement. To these are to be added separate places for King's evidence, boys, lunatics, and places for the first reception of prisoners, before they can be examined and classed :-a chapel, hospital, yards, and workshops for such as are willing to work. The classifications in jails will then be as follows: But there is a division still more important than any of these ; and that is a division into much smaller numbers than are gathered together in prisons :-40, 50, and even 70 and 80 felons, are often placed together in one yard, and live together for months previous to their trial. Any classification of offences, while there is such a multitude living together of one class, is perfectly nugatory and ridiculous; no character can escape from corruption and extreme vice in such a school. The law ought to be peremptory against the confinement of more than fifteen persons tegether of the same class. Unless some measure of this kind is resorted to, all reformation in prisons is impossible.* A very great, and a very neglected object in prisons, is Diet. There should be, in every jail and house of correction, four sorts of diet: 1st, Bread and Water; 2dly, Common prison diet, to be settled_by_the magistrates; 3dly, Best prison diet, to be settled by ditto; 4thly, Free diet, from which spirituous liquors altogether, and fermented liquors in excess, are excluded. All prisoners before trial should be allowed best prison diet, and be upon free diet, if they could afford it. Every sentence for imprisonment should expressly mention to which diet the prisoner is confined; and no other diet should be, on any account allowed to such prisoner after his sentence. Nothing can be so preposterous and criminally careless as the way in which persons confined upon sentence are suffered to live in prisons. Misdemeanants, who have money in their pockets, may be seen in many of our prisons with fish, buttered veal, rump steaks, and every kind of luxury; and as the practice prevails of allowing them to purchase a pint of ale each, the rich prisoner purchases many pints of ale in the name of his poorer brethren, and drinks them himself. A jail should be a place of punishment, from which men recoil with horror-a place of real suffering painful to the memory, terrible to the imagination; but if men can live idly, and live luxuriously, in a clean, well-aired, well-warmed, spacious habitation, is it any wonder that they set the law at defiance, and brave that magistrate who restores them to their former luxury and ease? There are a set of men well known to jailers, called Family-men, who are constantly returning to jail, and who may be said to spend the greater part of their life there—up to the time when they are hanged. Minutes of Evidence taken before Select Committee on Gaols. "Mr. WILLIAM BEEBY, Keeper of the New Clerkenwell Prison.-Have you many prisoners that return to you on re-commitment? A vast number; some of them are frequently discharged in the morning, and I have them back again in the evening; or they have been discharged in the evening, and I have had them back again in the morning."-Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 278. "FRANCIS CONST, Esq., Chairman of the Middlesex Quarter-sessions.— Has that opinion been confirmed by any conduct you have observed in prisoners that have come before you for trial? I only judge from the opposite thing, that, going into a place where they can be idle, and well protected from any inconveniences of the weather, and other things that poverty is open to, *We should much prefer solitary imprisonment; but are at present speaking of the regulations in jails where that system is excluded, they are not amended at all; they laugh at it frequently, and desire to go to the House of Correction. Once or twice, in the early part of the winter, upon sending a prisoner for two months, he has asked whether he could not stay longer, or words to that effect. It is an insulting way of saying they like it."-Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 285. The fact is, that a thief is a very dainty gentleman. Male parta cito dilabuntur. He does not rob to lead a life of mortification and self-denial. The difficulty of controlling his appetites, in all probability, first led him to expenses, which made him a thief to support him. Having lost character, and become desperate, he orders crab and lobster and veal cutlets at a public house, while a poor labourer is refreshing himself with bread and cheese. The most vulnerable part of a thief is his belly; and there is nothing he feels more bitterly in confinement than a long course of water-gruel and flour-puddings. It is a mere mockery of punishment to say, that such a man shall spend his money in luxurious viands, and sit down to dinner with fetters on his feet, and fried pork in his stomach. Restriction to diet in prisons is still more necessary, when it is remembered that it is impossible to avoid making a prison, in some respects, more eligible than the home of a culprit. It is almost always more spacious, cleaner, better ventilated, better warmed. All these advantages are inevitable on the side of the prison. The means, therefore, that remain of making a prison a disagreeable place, are not to be neglected; and of these, none are more powerful than the regulation of diet. If this be neglected, the meaning of sentencing a man to prison will be this-and it had better be put in these words : "Prisoner at the Bar, you are fairly convicted by a jury of your country of having feloniously stolen two pigs, the property of Stephen Muck, farmer. The Court having taken into consideration the frequency and enormity of this offence, and the necessity of restraining it with the utmost severity of punishment, do order and adjudge that you be confined for six months in a house larger, better, better aired, and warmer than your own, in company with 20 or 30 young persons in as good health and spirits as yourself. You need do no work; and you may have anything for breakfast, dinner, and supper, you can buy. In passing this sentence, the Court hope that your example will be a warning to others; and that evil-disposed persons will perceive, from your suffering, that the laws of their country are not to be broken with impunity." As the diet, according to our plan, is always to be a part of the sentence, a Judge will, of course, consider the nature of the offence for which the prisoner is committed, as well as the quality of the prisoner: and we have before stated, that all prisoners, before trial, should be upon the best prison diet, and unrestricted as to what they could purchase, always avoiding intemperance. These gradations of diet being fixed in all prisons, and these definitions of Jail and House of Correction being adhered to, the punishment of imprisonment may be apportioned with the greatest nicety either by the statute, or at the discretion of the Judge, if the law chooses to give him that discretion. There will be Imprisonment for different degrees of time. Imprisonment solitary, or in company, or in darkness. In houses of correction with labour. Imprisonment with diet on bread and water. Imprisonment with free diet. Every sentence of the Judge should state diet, as well as light or darkness, time, place, solitude, society, labour or ease; and we are strongly of opinion, that the punishment in prisons should be sharp and short. We would, in most cases, give as much of solitary confinement as would not injure men's minds, and as much of bread and water diet as would not injure their bodies. A return to prison should be contemplated with horror-horror, not excited by the ancient filth, disease, and extortion of jails; but by calm, well-regulated, wellwatched austerity-by the gloom and sadness wisely and intentionally thrown over such an abode. Six weeks of such sort of imprisonment would be much more efficacious than as many months of jolly company and veal cutlets. It appears, by the "Times" newspaper of the 24th of June, 1821, that two persons, a man and his wife, were committed at the Surrey Sessions for three years. If this county jail is bad, to three years of idleness and good living-if it is a manufacturing jail, to three years of regular labour, moderate living, and accumulated gains. They are committed principally for a warning to others, partly for their own good. Would not these ends have been much more effectually answered, if they had been committed, for nine months, to solitary cells upon bread and water; the first and last month in dark cells? If this is too severe, then lessen the duration still more, and give them more light days, and fewer dark ones ; but we are convinced the whole good sought may be better obtained in much shorter periods than are now resorted to. For the purpose of making jails disagreeable, the prisoners should remain perfectly alone all night, if it is not thought proper to render their confinement entirely solitary during the whole period of their imprisonment. Prisoners dislike this-and therefore it should be done; it would make their residence in jails more disagreeable, and render them unwilling to return there. At present, eight or ten women sleep in a room with a good fire, pass the night in sound sleep or pleasant conversation; and this is called confinement in a prison. A prison is a place where men, after trial and sentence, should be made unhappy by public lawful enactments, not so severe as to injure the soundness of mind or body. If this is not done, prisons are a mere invitation to the lower classes to wade, through felony and larceny, to better accommodations than they can procure at home. And here, as it appears to us, is the mistake of many excellent men who busy themselves (and wisely and humanely busy themselves) about prisons. Their first object seems to be the reformation of the prisoners, not the reformation of the public; whereas the first object should be, the discomfort and discontent of their prisoners; that they should become a warning, feel unhappy, and resolve never so to act again as to put themselves in the same predicament; and then as much reformation as is compatible with this, the better. If a man says to himself, "This prison is a comfortable place," while he says to the chaplain or the visitor that he will come there no more, we confess we have no great confidence in his public declaration; but if he say, "This is a place of misery and sorrow, you shall not catch me here again," there is much reason to believe he will be as good as his word; and he then becomes (which is of much more consequence than his own reformation) a warning to others. Hence it is we object to that spectacle of order and decorum-carpenters in one shop, tailors in another, weavers in a third, sitting down to a meal by ring of bell, and receiving a regular portion of their earnings. We are afraid it is better than real life on the other side of the wall, or so very little worse that nobody will have any fear to encounter it. In Bury jail, which is considered as a pattern jail, the prisoners under a sentence of confinement are allowed to spend their weekly earnings (two, three, and four shillings per week) in fish, tobacco, and vegetables; so states the jailer in his examination before the House of Commons-and we have no doubt it is well meant; but is it punishment? We were most struck in reading the evidence of the Jail Committee before the House of Commons, with the opinions of the jailer of the Devizes jail, and with the practice of the Magistrates who superintend it.* "Mr. T. BRUTTON, Governor of the Gaol at Devizes.-Does this confinement in solitude make prisoners more averse to return to prison? I think it does.-Does it make a strong impression upon them? I have no doubt of it.— Does it make them more obedient and orderly while in gaol? I have no doubt it does. Do you consider it the most effectual punishment you can make use of? I do.-Do you think it has a greater effect upon the minds of prisoners than any apprehensions of personal punishment? I have no doubt of it.— Have you any dark cells for the punishment of refractory prisoners? I have.— Do you find it necessary occasionally to use them? Very seldom. -Have you, in any instance, been obliged to use the dark cell in the case of the same prisoner twice? Only on one occasion, I think.-What length of time is it necessary to confine a refractory prisoner to bring him to his senses? Less than one day. Do you think it essential, for the purpose of keeping up the discipline of the prison, that you should have it in your power to have recourse to the punishment of dark cells? I do; I consider punishment in a dark cell for one day has a greater effect upon a prisoner than to keep him on bread and water for a month.”—Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1819, P. 359. * The Winchester and Devizes jails seem to us to be conducted upon better principles than any other, though even these are by no means what jails should be. |