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11TT1 C.O.885

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RECORD OFFICE, LONDON |

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tary of State instructing him to bring the subject of additional prison accommodation before the Legislature, and suggesting that I should be called upon to prepare a report, modelled on that which 1 laid before his Excelleney in the month of August, 1870, to accompany his Excellency's communication.

In that report I endeavoured to show that the want of space for the number of prisoners crowded into the Town Hall Prison was excessive. Since that date there has been no amelioration of the evil, the number of prisoners having at times been in excess of that on which I based my former calculation.

As to the fitness of the Town Hall for a prison, as regards space and ventilation. The Town Hall, in which the Legislative Chambers and the Courts of Justice meet for the dispatch of business, is identical with the Town Hall Jail, the wards in which the prisoners are confined being under the apartments used for the above purposes.

These wards in the basement of the building and partially underground, are nine in number, situate on either side of an opening, by doors constructed of iron bars, into a narrow passage running the length of the building, and are quite unfit for the numbers crowded into them, both as regards their size or ventilation.

With respect to the insufficiency of space. I find the area of the wards, inclusive of the passage (which, as a means of admission of air and containing 4,117 cubic feet may be taken into calculation) to contain in the whole 26,788 cubic feet.

For the last three months the average number of prisoners (deducting those in hospital) confined in that space amounted to 150, giving an average of only 178 cubic feet for each individual, a quantity greatly below the recognised amount per head-riz., 600 feet. Making allowance for the difference in the nature and habits of the African race, when compared with Europeans, for whom the calculation of space required was made; such a disproportion cannot but be considered most excessive.

The ventilation of these wards is also most defective, being effected by means of small barred windows looking into and being on a level with the prison yard-the close proximity of some of them, however, to the flights of steps leading up on either side to the main building and to the walls running in front and rear of it, render them nearly useless for the admission of air, at the same time that the prisoners confined in the wards on the leeward side of the passage, are of necessity recipients of the foul air generated in the wards on the windward side, passing as it does through the bars of the doors, across the passage. A consequence of this want of ventilation and overcrowding may be instanced by the fact, that after the prisoners have been locked up all night, when the turnkeys enter the passage in the morning for the purpose of turning them out, the atmosphere has become so polluted that they are forced to return into the open air before unlocking all the wards.

It may therefore be considered a matter of congratulation that under these conditions the prison is as healthy as it is. That there is so small an amount of sickness among the prisoners is, I consider, attributable in the first degree to the fact that the majority of the prisoners are in the open air from sunrise to sunset. The vigilant supervision, how- ever, of the Medical Officer attendant on the gaol, combined with the attention paid to cleanliness by the daily cleansing of the wards by the prisoners, and the frequent lime- washing, contribute much to render it healthy. Should wc, however, again be visited by an epidemic of a severe nature, we may naturally look for a similar result to that expe- rienced on former occasions, under similar circumstances. Since the date of my former reports, as a further sanitary measure, by permission of the Town Hall Board, I have established a large bath for the use of the prisoners. This bath is supplied by water under the arrangements entered into with the Water Works Company for the supply of water to the jail, and entails no expense to the country, at the same time it supersedes the former practice of the prisoners washing under the pump, a very inefficient mode of cleansing themselves, and which they avoided as much as possible. Under the present system, it is compulsory on every prisoner to hathe a certain number of days in the week, however adverse he may be to the process.

The wards above alluded to, with six cells in the jail yard, used for the solitary con- finement of prisoners guilty of breaches of prison discipline, constitute the total accom- modation for prisoners under sentence of penal labour, misdemeanments, those under sureties, and prisoners committed to take their trial at the Grand Session.

The other part of the Town Hall assigned for the use of prisoners is the debtors' quarters, consisting of three rooms in the upper part of the building, well ventilated and with a sufficiency of space for the number generally confined in them. There is also the hospital, a detatched building consisting of three wards, the ventilation of which is good and for the usual number of its inmates sufficiently spacious.

2nd. As a place of security. The Town Hall is quite the reverse of what a prison intended for the safe custody of prisoners ought to be. In lieu of the prison being kept

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secluded and access being denied to all but those whose business connected with the esta- blishment would entitle to admission, the gates are obliged to be kept constantly open to all comers, and people of all classes have free ingress and egress.

This arises as mentioned above, from the Town Hall being the appointed place for the meeting of the Legislative Chambers and the various courts of justice. Hence a concourse of stangers in the gaol yard, in the shape of plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses, and a crowd of idlers of that class usually attendant upon courts of justice, in fact a constant going backwards and forwards, and bustle, offering the most unusual facilities for the escape of prisoners, at the same time frequently necessitating the temporary cessa- tion of the usual penal occupation of the prisoners.

3. The discipline of the Town Hall Prison is carried on by means of a staff of one keeper, three turnkeys, and a gatekeeper, scarcely too numerous, when we consider the number of prisoners, and the circumstances militating against their safe custody. There is also a staff of superintendents for the supervision of the convicts, when at work outside the jail or performing penal labour, in the shape of breaking stones or doing shot drill, within its walls.

The partial suspension during the past two years of the regulations for the per- formance of shot drill by prisoners sentenced for short terms, and those working out the earlier stages of long ones, caused by the demand for labour outside the walls of the prison, in the shape of work at the dredge and at Government House, to the number of forty-two men per day, has hardly given an opportunity to enable us rightly to judge of its efficiency as a deterrent punishment, but I find as many as 152 prisoners inmates of the Town Hall Gaol were reconvicted during the years 1871 and 1872. Many more than once-showing that the penal labour outside the walls of the gaol, has little in it, to deter prisoners from returning to it-regarding it as they do, an indulgence to be allowed to work outside-and for obvious reasons the sight of what is going on in the streets, on the wharves, and in the harbour, recognition of prisoners by their friends among the crowd, shouting news of their family-with other advantages taken in different ways, of the Superintendent's notice being withdrawn, tending greatly to relieve the monotony of prison life at the same time that much of the outdoor work on which the convicts are engaged is of so light a character, that it can hardly be ranked in the category of penal labour, and certainly does not prevent a former prisoner again risking becoming the inmate of a gaol, where, as he well knows, his condition is made much better, receiving us he does better food, clothing, lodging and medical attendance, with easier work than would be required of him to earn the small wages which he receives for his ordinary daily labour. It is therefore a matter for consideration when we compare the effective value of free labour with that of the conviets, and having in mind the cost of the latter's main- tenance, whether with a view to reduce the numbers within prisons it would not be for the public benefit to employ free labour, the expense being more than equalized by the then practicable reduction in the staff of Superintendents, and the greater amount of work done, while no prisoner would be allowed the indulgence of going outside the prison walls during the term of his imprisonment.

On this point, as being applicable to it, I would refer to the opinion of Mr. C'ardwell, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, as expressed in his Circular despatch of 16th January, 1865, and to which my attention has been drawn since writing the above. He says:-"The question which is next in importance is the penal efficacy of the labour exacted from offenders under sentence of imprisonment with hard labour, and the method by which that efficacy is insured, and you will observe that the object of the sentence is inevitably sacrificed when industrial and productive employment is substituted in short terms of imprisonment, or in the earlier days of long temis, for labour strictly penal, Whilst it will be found to be a delusion to suppose that any real economy is effected by defeating the object of the sentence, on the contrary, the result of all attempts to economise by industrial employment at the sacrifice of effective punishment, is to show that whilst the labour of the prisoners does not repay the cost of their subsistence and supervision, their number is greater in proportion as their labour is less deterrent, and the community is charged with the cost of more prisoners, whilst at the same time it suffers by the commission of more offences. Thus labour enforced by the tread-wheel or the crank for a minimum term of imprisonment or a portion of the sentence, is considered by the Lords Committee to be essential in the case of every prisoner condemned to imprisonment with hard labour.”

If the Legislature would sanction the summary punishment of whipping for petty thefts, such as cane, poultry-stealing, &c., I believe the power to inflict it, or its infliction in a few instances, would have a deterrent effect, relieve the gaols from much of the over- crowding which periodically takes place at the season when cane-stealing prevails, and

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