THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 22ND SEPTEMBER, 1877.
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number of prison offences---out of all portion to the increase of crime-indicates something radically wrong. An annual increase of 250 per cent in the number of prison offences is a serious and significant fact. Is it surprising, with such prima facie evidence of prison disorganization laid before him in the returns forwarded by my predecessor for the years 1874, 1875, and 1876, that Lord CARNARVON should instruct me to review the whole system of prison discipline in Hongkong?
In the returns laid before Lord CARNARVON are also given the exact number of cases brought before the Police Magistrates, and the number of prisoners convicted by them. You will perhaps be surprised to learn-as I was very much surprised to see it--that the number of prisoners brought before the Police Magistrates in 1876 amounted to 10,426, and the number of persons convicted and punished amounted to 7,998. These figures appear in returns dated Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong,
February, 1877.
and such, gentlemen, with some small experience, I venture to assert that such an amount of crime, and preceu extraordinary growth of prison offences as you have seen recorded in this Colony last year 140,000. g years is without precedent in any part of the British Empire with a population of only
How is should be st his to be accounted for? The system of prison discipline is the system by which crime reduce the ninped out. It is the great engine the Government is bound to use to repress crime and in proper womber of criminals; joined, to efficiency in the administration of justice. With these two not have exisking order, the crime which has been recorded before my arrival in the Colony should on this questřed. How has the grave result come to pass? Well, I am myself slow to form a decision with some fan, but it is manifest from the Secretary of State's despatches that he has been struck returns to whets which it was impossible not to see. How could he shut his eyes to the authentic more than those I have referred? But, it is quite possible, his Lordship may have noticed something prison was adminigures. In the report of the Gaol Committee, the guiding principle upon which the Colony, and the fastered is laid down in these words:-" Owing to the peculiar circumstances of this whose language is it that by far the larger proportion of the criminals confined in the gaol are Chinese, are imperfectly undeut little known to those who have charge of them, whose characters and dispositions any knowledge, any stood, and of whose previous history and lives it is almost impossible to obtain seems hopeless.
attempt to cultivate their higher faculties, and to improve their moral condition Gentlemen, that British Empire Her prison discipline. mixture of sever these to be l·
are trying with su
ay
??
was a very grave sentence for the Committee to write. In every part of the Majesty's Government have laid down what they believe to be sound principles of Over and over again it has been said that that system should consist of a due e punishment with some attempt at reformation; that the moment you assume one of opeless and act on that assumption, you deviate from a well established principle, and you not a new, but a very old worn out experiment; an experiment tried years ago, but never s; on the contrary, with the same lamentable result that you have seen here. Your om that sound and axiomatic principle of prison discipline, does not however entirely he extraordinary number and steady increase of your criminal class.
s a rule laid down over and over again by Secretaries of State, that when a man is sentenced rgo, for example, eight years of penal servitude, he should undergo at least two-thirds of that ment; that release from gaol must depend upon a man's steady good conduct in prison, and no circumstances should he be released without undergoing two-thirds of his sentence. But do I find here? In January last, no less than fifty prisoners are branded and deported to China Hongkong, thirty-nine of them after having served one-third only of their legal sentences. Some sentenced by my honourable and learned friend on the right (the Chief Justice) to eight years' penal tude; others by my honourable friend on the left (the Hon. C. MAY) to three months' imprisonment. y are all treated in the same way; and this curious fact is recorded on the books-recorded in the papers laid before the Executive-that the prison conduct of one man is "very bad," according to Superintendent's report, and the next man's very good;" another prisoner's conduct is recorded as ifferent," another as "well conducted;" some had been repeatedly punished for the worst class of n offences, others had not a single bad record against them; yet all treated in the same way: with ent sentences, but all sent out of the Colony after passing one-third of their sentence only in n, quite irrespective of what their conduct in prison had been. That, I need hardly assure you, posed to all sound principles of prison discipline. Bad as its moral effect in the prison must have 1, it did not prove of much benefit either to the honest community outside. This wholesale nding and deportation was avowedly done "to relieve the overcrowding in the prison." Of the two ches of criminals thus transferred to the neighbouring shores of China in January, some found their
back to commit robberies again in Hongkong before the month of April.
"
My honourable friend the Acting Colonial Treasurer and Senior Police Magistrate will understand me when I also assert that the system of repeated short sentences on old offenders is a bad system. I have had cases before me recommended for deportation in which it was not a case of a second, or third, or fourth, but a sixth or seventh offence by the same man. Cases come before me of this character: first offence, larceny, sentence one month's imprisonment with hard labour and to be flogged; second offence, larceny, punishment two months' hard labour and to be flogged; third offence, larceny again, with one month's imprisonment and to be flogged. Then, probably, the juvenile criminal is grown up, and the