PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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OTOGRAPHIC- APH-NOT TO ISSION OF THE
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Practical mode of carrying out the
above principle.
Deterring effect of punishment incou
siderable.
community against the criminal class? Is it not obvious that, as soon as our enemy is delivered into our hands-as soon as it is clear that he is our enemy that he belongs, that is, to the population who live by depre- dation, and is not a mere casual offender, led astray by want or passion- we should keep hands upon him till he has ceased to be our enemy? What should we do in any ordinary case of pertinacious and systematic hostility? Should we confine the man till a certain space of time had passed?-or till the hostile mood of mind had passed? If we have seized a desperado who, either from bad passions, or perverse insanity, or untoward but resistless circumstances, hates us or covets our possessions, and is virtually certain to be always assailing us, or injuring us, or preying upon us, and if we know that, as soon as we untie his hands, he will be at us again-do we erer untie his kands? Should we not deem it madness to do so, unless we could either remove him permanently out of our path, or change his disposition, or incapacitate him from action, or in some way or other secure ourselves against a repetition of his former practices? And would not this resolution to hold him fast be confirmed by the reflection, that by so doing, we were preventing him from training up new enemies to us-that, we were shutting up his school? In like manner, is it not clear, that when we have once got hold of a regular criminal-a member of that CRIMINAL POPULATION whose treatment, defeat, and extir- pation, constitute the problem we are set to solve-we must never let him go, till we have in some way or other incapacitated him-till we have eradicated the inimical and predatory will, or destroyed the inimical and predatory power-till his enmity is either disarmed or reconciled.
Assuming the correctness of the principle, then, if means can be found for carrying it into practical effect, not only will the existing race of regular criminals be permanently disposed of as fast as we can lay our hands upon them, but the younger generation, whom they are now, in and out of prison, occupied in training, will be saved on the threshold. And if measures can be devised and adopted (as we do not doubt they may) for preventing the children of the neglected and dangerous class from growing up to recruit the criminal ranks, we may yet live to see our way out of this fatal question.
By what measures, then, can we effect the proposed permanent inca- pacitation; and how shall we know when we have effected it? Three modes suggest themselves to be passed under review. We may incapaci- tate criminals:-
1. By deterring them.
2. By removing them.
3. By incarcerating them till reclaimed.
1. It is the opinion of all who are intimately conversant with the character and feelings of the criminal population, that the deterring effect of ordinary punishment upon them has been greatly over-estimated; and a few moments' consideration will incline all to this opinion. In the first place, crime is the profession of this class—their walk in life-the business by which they gain their daily bread. The gaol, the convict-ship, even the gallows, are among the chances of this profession, and as such have been familiar to their minds from infancy. These are to them just what capture and death are to the soldier-contingent possibilities, to be avoided, indeed, but also to be faced and hazarded; and which neither drive back on the threshold of enlistment the recruit of the army or the recruit of crime, nor deter them from the ordinary risks and enterprises of the career they have embraced. Nay, more, we know, that even the certainty of an early death does not deter the knife-grinder from his fatal calling; why should the prospect of far smaller evils deter the thief? Robson, Redpath, and Sir J. D. Paul, must have felt certain of ultimate detection and punish- ment. yet the consideration never made them pause.
In the second place, we must remember, that we are dealing with men engaged in, and trained to, a regular trade. It is possible, indeed -or rather it is conceivable-that you might make that trade so hazar- dous and unprofitable that few would enter it; but for those already in it
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to be deterred from pursuing it, would be to be compelled to change their calling-a thing which few men in any line can be induced to do, and which, to the criminal, is almost impossible, because, as we have seen, nearly all other occupations are closed to him. Probably the utmost that severe and special punishment could do in deterring the criminal population, would' be to drive them upon the less hazardous and less heavily-visited branches of their profession. This, however, would, in some cases, be a great gain. Thirdly, the mass of criminals are not men of quick or vivid fancies. Their executive and perceptive faculties are often preternaturally sharpened, but their contemplative and imaginative faculties are blunted or lying in abeyance. Yet a very considerable endowment of these is presupposed by the theory which lays much stress on the deterrent influence of penal inflictions. For, in order that punishment should be efficacious to deter ordinary and unimaginative men, it must possess three attributes: it must it must be certain; it must be prompt; and it must be risible, or, at least, easily realisable. Now, our existing punishments do not possess—perhaps can scarcely be made to possess--any one of these essential qualifications. So far from being certain, they are problematical; so far from being prompt, they are usually very distaut, and very slow. The chances in favour of the criminal, especially in the slighter offences, are probably, twenty to one. Some calculations give an average of six years' impunity
to the ordinarily skilful thief. Every conviction represents many offences. The depredator, therefore, in the pursuit of his calling, is not braving actual detection and retribution, so much as their remote and problematic contingency. Neither is the punishment, thus indefinitely postponed, at all uniform or calculable when it comes. detected in the most trivial of his larcenies, and be treated with propor- The practised criminal may be tionate mildness. Even if caught in the commission of a grave offence, the sentence he may meet with depends greatly on the accident of the judge who tries him, of the temper of the jury, of the views of the Home Secretary, who may mitigate his penalty. It is not too much to say that
the young villain who enters on a course of crime, has no reliable data on which to calculate what fate he has to expect, nor when that fate will overtake him. How, then, should he be deterred by its contemplation?
Nor are our punishments visible. In the majority of cases, the convict
is removed from the dock, and never seen or heard of again by the spec- tators, whose minds his penalty is supposed to terrify from crime, till he emerges after the lapse of years. He disappears-that is all that is known of him. The world is told that he is at Pentonville, or on the public works, or at Bermuda, or in Western Australia; but what sort of existence these vague words imply, the criminal himself did not know when sen- tenced, and few who heard him condemned know either. indeed, three punishments to which it would be reasonable to attribute a There are, powerful deterring influence, because they are cognizable by the senses, and are thrust upon our sight, viz., hanging, flogging, and working in chains. Yet every one of these, English feeling or English folly has elimi- nated, or is labouring to eliminate, from our penal code. It is idle to lean on the deterring effect of punishment while we repudiate the only punish- ments which might really deter.-(The writer by no means desires to express an opinion against capital punishments, and earnestly desires the restoration of flogging for all crimes of violence; but he anticipates from these inflictions, not a diminution or determent of the criminal class, but only a transference of their activity to other branches of the profession.)
a punishment
2. A little reflection will probably convince us that we cannot get rid of our criminal population by deporting them, and that we ought not if we Transportation could. Transportation, invaluable as a resource, is ineffective and undesi- impracticable or rable as an infliction: but, unhappily, by employing it as the latter, we inadequate, and as have nearly deprived ourselves of it as the former. A portion of the public undesirable. is clamouring for the renewal of transportation on a great scale, simply on the same ground which leads the metropolis to decide on depositing its sewerage at Erith or Gravesend; it is anxious to send away its moral and material filth, and cares not whither. Such scandalous and immoral selfishness must be peremptorily met and may be easily put to shame and silence.
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