1
CORRESPONDENCE
RELATIVE TO THE QUESTION OF
PUNISHMENT
BY
FLOGGING.
CIRCULAR.
9614.
7
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
गय
C.O.885
Reference :-
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
SIR,
No. 1.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN to the GOVERNORS OF NON-RESPONSIBLE
GOVERNMENT COLONIES.
Downing Street, 25th May 1897.
THE question of flogging, as a punishment for crime and more especially as a punishment for prison offences, has been a fruitful subject of discussion and correspondence in this country and in the colonies, but my attention has been somewhat specially drawn to the matter by observing that the punishment is much more freely resorted to in the Crown colonies than in the United Kingdom, and that there has been in some instances perhaps a tendency rather to widen than to contract the scope of its application.
2. I am aware that on this subject, as on many others, it does not necessarily follow that what experience has shown to be right and expedient in this country is right and expedient all the world over, but where the question is one of inflicting pain on human beings by way of punishment, it becomes a duty to scrutinise very carefully any deviations from the lines which public criticism and expert advice have combined to lay down in England as being reasonable, and such as most right-minded men would
approve.
3. In England the punishment of flogging for prison offences-and I now confine It is considered to be a serious and exceptional myself to prison offences only-is rare. punishment to be employed only in the most special cases. In many of the Crown colonies the facts are widely different. Flogging is an everyday occurrence and is freely administered.
Very
4. Now, it is true of nearly all these colonies that they are not so fully equipped with modern appliances for maintaining prison discipline as is the United Kingdom. often there are not funds to pay for an adequate prison building, and complete separation is, therefore, impossible; or the prison staff-largely composed of natives-is not satis- factory, and discipline suffers in consequence. There is, therefore, a natural tendency to invoke the aid of the cat and the birch, in order to make good defects of construction or of personnel.
5. But, on the other hand, if flogging becomes the rule and not the exception, there is apt to grow up a perverted public opinion satisfied with keeping order by the lash, as being apparently an effective and inexpensive method of enforcing discipline, and opposed to sounder and healthier views as to deterrence and reform.
6. Especially is this the case when, as is inevitable in the tropical colonies, the offenders are for the most part of a different race and colour from those who are placed in a position to control and to punish them.
7. Among the latter there will, in the ordinary course of probabilities, be now and again men of rough fibre; and at out-stations, sometimes even at head-quarters, there are not the checks and safeguards against abuses which exist in more highly developed
16177-5
A