CO885-(2-3) — Page 410

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

minih

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ILUC.O.885

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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assaults on the police, sending the sufferer into retirement for life on a pension; and, finally, the costs to come from the training of the young

by the old offenders in the ways of offence?

If the conclusion should be arrived at that Proximate pumshuments. prolonged penal imprisonment is a waste of suffer- ing, and that deterrent purposes are to be effected within a comparatively short time after conviction,

it would become necessary to consider whether some new severities should or should not be added to those already inflicted in this country in the earlier stages of penal servitule or of imprison- ment with hard labour. In the "travaux forcés,” under the original Code Napoléon (Code Pénal, 1. i, ch. i, Arts. 15, 19, 20), chains and a elog were prescribed, and likewise branding.” The appliances of severity now in use in our prisons, exclusive of what are called the convict prisons (but might better be called the penal servitude prisons), are those prescribed and regulated by the Prison Act, 1865 (28 and 29 Vict., cap. 126). By sec. 17, Art. 5, criminal prisoners are to be prevented from hold- ing any communication with each other, either by every prisoner being kept in a separate cell day and night (except when at chapel or taking exercise), or by every prisoner being confined at night to his cell, and being kept during the day under such superintendence as will prevent communication. Under Schedule 1, Arts. 57 and

* Branding was removed from it in the revision of 1832 (1, 22).

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58, strictly solitary, as distinguished from "sepa- rate," imprisonment, is authorized for offences committed within the prison for terms not ex- ceeding one month; and under Arts. 50 and 60, irons for twenty-four hours and corporal punish- ment are authorized. By secs. 19 and 20, taken in connection with Schedule 1, Article 34, male prisoners sentenced to hard labour are to undergo not less than six nor more than ten hours per day for not less than three months at the beginning

of their sentences of hard labour of the first, i.e., the most penal class, which is to be at the tread- wheel, shot-drill, crank, capstan, stone-breaking,

or the like; and they are to undergo the same for the remainder of their sentence also, unless the Visiting Justices shall substitute labour of the second class, which is to be such as the Visiting Justices shall prescribe,

The Report of Lord Carnarvon's Committee of 1863, with the evidence on which it was founded, may be taken to have established con- clusively the fact that labour at the tread-wheel, or crank, or shot-drill, is far more severely penal than any industrial labour, and it is on those kinds that we must rely for making labour formidably deterrent.

The severities in use in the so-called Convict, that is, the penal servitude prisons, air separate imprisonment for nine months at the beginning of the sentence (which under the 27 and 28 Vict., cap. 47, cannot now be for less than five years). The nine months' separate imprisonment

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