2. Prisoners of both sexes sentenced to penal servitude are confined in the General Penitentiary, as well as all male prisoners whose sentence on a conviction exceede twelve months; male prisonere who are sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment may be sent either to the General Penitentiary or the local district prison, but no male prisoner whose term of imprisonment is less than twelve months can be committed to the General Penitentiary.
3. Female prisoners, however, from the Kingston Circuit and Kingston District Courts may be committed to the General Penitentiary without reference to the length of their imprisonment, the only other prison within the district to which female prisoners can be sent being the Morant Bay Short-Term Prison, to which no prisoner can be sentenced for more than sixty days.
4. One great improvement has taken place within the last few years with regard to the class of offenders committed to the Ĝeneral Penitentiary.
Up to the year 1867 prisoners conumitted for trifling offences by the police magistrate and Courts of Petty Sessions from Kingston, Port Royal, and Saint Andrew, were all sent to the Penitentiary. They are now sent, in pursuance of Law 40 of 1867, to the Saint Catherine District Prison, which not only to some extent relieves the over- crowding in the Penitentiary, hat prevents the association which formerly took place between persons convicted of trivial offences and hardened criminals, and does away with the facility of communicating with friends outside, which the fact of short- sentenced prisoners constantly coming and going must have given the other convicts.
5. The district prisons receive first class misdemeanants, as defined by the "Prison Consolidated Act, 1856," sec. 39, prisoners sentenced with or without hard labour to any term of imprisonment not excceding twelve months, including persons sentenced with the alternative of release on payment of a fine.
Debtors committed on a judgment summons under Law 26 of 1871, though prisoners of this class, unless sentenced to hard labour, are usually committed to one of the county gaols whenover the distance renders it practicable to do so.
Prisoners committed for trial at the district Courts, which are held monthly at most of their stations, are also detained in the district prisons, though as a rule prisoners committed for trial at the Circuit Courts are sent for detention to one or other of the county gaols, as are prisoners whose trial is adjourned from one District Court to
another.
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6. This practice of sending prisoners committed for trial to the county gaols instead of to the nearest district prison seems to us, in many cases, to work considerable hardship on prisoners committed for trial, and whose guilt or innocence must, of course, be considered as still problematical.
Thus, although there is a short-term prison in Black River, prisoners committed for trial from that place or from Industry Park are sent to the Cornwall County Gaol at Falmouth-a distance of 90 miles from Industry Park, and 70 miles from Black River; and it not unfrequently happens that they have scarcely arrived there before it becomes necessary to send them back again to be in time to take their trial at Black River.
This not only entails great hardship on untried prisoners, but throws a great amount of extra duty on the constabulary, and deprives the public of their services in the ordinary course of their duty, while considerable expense has to be incurred for the conveyance of prisoners who are unable to walk. So, again, prisoners committed for trial at the Circuit Court from Savanna-la-Mar and the surrounding district are sent for detention to the gaol at Falmouth, a distance of 51 miles, although they might well be detained at the Lucea District Prison, where there are separate wards and a separate yard for untried prisoners, and which is only 22 miles from Savanna-la-Mar.
7. Short-term prisons receive prisoners whose sentence does not exceed sixty days. In our own opinion, the usefulness of these institutions could be very much increased if the time was extended to ninety days.
8. By the amalgamation of the Surrey County Gaol at Kingston with the Middlesex County Gaol at Spanish Town, and the transfer of the Cornwall County Gaol from Montego Bay to part of the Falmouth District Prison-which has been set aside for the purpose considerable saving has been effected, as may be easily imagined when it is stated that the, average cost of each prisoner confined in the old Cornwall Gaol at Montego Bay was at the rate of 521. per annum, while the increase in the number of prisoners sent to the Middlesex and Surrey County Gaol and Cornwall County Gaol at the Falmouth District Prison has been so small that it has not been necessary to increase the number of officers employed in either of these prisons.
• Law No. 40 of 1867, sec. 2.
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9. Except in the case of the General Penitentiary, no record seems to have been preserved of the numbers which the different prisons were intended to contain. Several of the prisons have been altogether abandoned, and others diverted from their original purpose, either by having to serve for much larger districts than they were originally built for, or by being reduced to mere short-term prisons.
10. The actual average greatest and smallest number of prisoners confined in the several prisons during each of the last five years will appear from the annexed Return. 11. The principal law by which the Penitentiary and other prisons are controlled is the Prisons Consolidated Act, 1856. This law, after providing for the purchase of lands for prison purposes when found to be necessary, empowers the Governor to appoint, and, when necessary, to remove the officers of the General Penitentiary (a power extended to all other prisons by 28 Vic. cap. 22, sec. 5), to make rules and regulations, with the advice of the Privy Council, for the government of the several prisons, the classification, separation, instruction and employment of the prisoners, which rules and regulations have the force of law to remove prisoners sentenced for any felony or misdemeanor of the second class from one prison to another, and provides for the expenses of the prisons and the salaries of the officers.
12. The Act further provides for the appointment of official visitors to the General and Female Penitentiary by the Governor, and of visiting justices to the other prisons then existing by the justices of the peace for the parish in which the prison is situated in special sessions assembled. It defines the duties of the visiting justices, and gives power to any justice not being a visitor to enter into and examine every prison in the parish for which he is a justice of the peace, and to report any abuse to the Custos, who is therefore bound to summon a special session to consider the question. It gives the Inspector of Prisons full power to visit and inspect the prison, and to examine officers and prisoners, and all books and papers relating to any prisons, and provides for the maintenance of prisoners in the county gaols.
13. It lays down the duties of the Superintendents, and gives them power to punish minor prison offences by close confinement in the refractory and solitary cells, upon bread and water only, for any time not exceeding three days. It requires the surgeon to visit the prison every morning, and see every prisoner who is sick or in solitary or separate confinement, to see every prisoner twice at least in every week, to keep a daily journal, to send in a quarterly report, and perform the other duties specified in the schedule to the Act.
14. The expenses of the penitentarics and prisons as well as the Reformatory are defrayed from the general revenue of the island, assisted in some instances by the earnings of the prisoners themselves. The carnings of the different prisoners and their respective costs will appear from the annexed Return, numbered 3.
15. It will be observed from these returns that the costs of maintaining a pri- soner varies very much in the different prisons. This arises in part from the great difference in the price of food, more especially ground provisions and corn, in different parishes of the island, and the difficulty and delay in communicating between them, which prevents an equal scale of price being arrived at.
16. With regard to the site and general arrangement of the prison buildings, we may observe that throughout the island we found them, with a few exceptions, in fair -repairs, but before the separate system can be carried out in its integrity, nearly every prison in the island will have to be greatly enlarged or entirely rebuilt.
17. The prisons were mostly built to meet much lower requirements than módern reforms necessitate. There is no record of any certification of the cells, though in the case of the prison last opened, that at Port Antonio, the Inspector of Prisons refused to allow the cells to be used in the state in which they were handed over to him by the Public Works Department, and insisted upon their being improved.
A minute description, with plans, of the several prisons will be found in the appendix.
18. The separation between the sexes is complete in all the prisons in the Colony, but it is much to bo regretted that the separation of prisoners at night is not carried out completely in any of the prisons; indeed, except in the case of one or two of the smaller prisons, it would be impossible to carry it out effectually without entirely recon- structing the whole of the prison buildings in the island. Thus, for instance, at the General Penitentiary the number of separate cells in the male side is 303, while the daily average number of prisoners in the year 1871-72 was 150, and this number has been largely exceeded in former years. This is the only prison in the island which was
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