116
No. 57.
THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 10TH MARCH, 1877.
GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.
The following Report of the Gaol Committee appointed by His Excellency the Administrator in October 1875 to consider the whole subject of Gaol Administration in this Colony, together with a copy of the Regulations and Dietary Scale which have been revised, corrected, and finally approved by His Excellency the Administrator in Council, are published for general information,
By Command,
H. E. WODEHOUSE,
Acting Colonial Secretary.
Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 8th March, 1877.
REPORT OF THE GAOL COMMITTEE.
GENERAL REMARKS.
The principles on which the Gaol system in England as well as in the Colonies ought to be carrid on are now so well ascertained, and have received such high sanction, that it only remains to accept them and apply them to each particular Gaol, as far as local circumstances permit.
It is now settled beyond the reach of controversy, that the primary object of punishment is to deter from crime, and that every other idea must be subsidiary to it.
Important as the mental and moral training of criminals may be, and satisfactory as it may be to make a prison self-supporting by employing prisoners in remunerative labour, these objects must be considered of secondary importance, and must be put aside if they have the effect of rendering punishments lighter, and therefore more tolerable and less deterrent.
Owing to the peculiar circumstances of this Colony, and the fact that by far the larger proportion of the criminals confined in the Gaol are Chinese, whose language is but little known to those who have charge of them, whose characters and dispositions are imperfectly understood, and of whose previous history and lives it is almost impossible to obtain any knowledge, any attempt to cultivate their higher faculties and to improve their moral condition seems hopeless.
The European prisoners undergoing long sentences are very few, the larger portion by far are soldiers and sailors imprisoned under what may be termed moderate sentences for breaches of Military and Naval discipline, and there is not time enough to give room for hope that permanent impressions can be produced by teaching and moral discipline. The only resource is to make the life of prisoners in Gaol, and of Chinese prisoners especially, as distasteful as it can possibly be made, consistently with reason and humanity, by hard labour, hard fare, and strict physical discipline. In the course of their investigation, the Committee have formed the opinion, that Chinese prisoners on long sentences have been fed on a scale of diet which must be a positive inducement to the majority of them to return to Gaol, so superior is it, both in quantity and quality, to the fare which the free labourer earning honest wages can
command.
As to European prisoners, the majority of the Committee are of opinion, that the dietary has been too high in some respects.
In this opinion Mr. TONNOCHY, who has had great experience in the results of the management of the Gaol, does not concur, and it is right to state that the Medical Officer agrees with him.
In the suggestions drawn up for the use of His Excellency the Governor in Council, which follow, the Committee have tried to remedy serious faults in the system, and have sought to discover what is the minimum of daily food on which a prisoner can perform the maximum of daily labour.
The recommendations made by the Committee, after very careful enquiry, might, it is suggested, be tried experimentally, under the close supervision of the Medical Officer and the Visiting Justices, before they are finally adopted.
GAOL REGULATIONS.
The code of Gaol laws now in force consists of the Gaol Ordinance, No. 4 of 1863, the Penal Servitude Ordinance, No. 10 of 1858, and the involved and confused body of Regulations drawn up as long ago as 1857, and amended and altered by Orders of various Governors.
These Ordinances and the Regulations are in many points contradictory.
The Committee have revised and drawn up the Regulations anew, preserving as much of the old materials as seem to be suitable, but re-arranging them under heads of cognate subjects, and incorporating such portions of the Prisons Act of 1865, the Singapore Ordinance recently prepared by the late Mr. BIRCH, and Captain ÎNNES, R.E., and of the Rules found in the Appendix to the Lords' Report, as seem likely to be of use in this Colony.
The number of the proposed Regulations is somewhat increased, but principally by sub-division. The Committee have avoided two minute directions which might tend to embarrass an intelligent Superintendent.