1841-1886
HER MAJESTY'S COLONIAL POSSESSIONS.
245
was altered so as to provide for the branding and deportation of prisoners who had only served one third of their sentences. Occasionally prisoners have been deported who had served from one fifth to one tenth only of their sentences. Thus legislative sanction was formally given to a system of remission of sentences entirely different from that established by Sir Hercules Robinson.
48. As the new system admitted of reducing the number of prisoners in the gaol at any moment, it also appeared to render his idea of a new gaol unnecessary.
49. I soon found that this experiment in the treatment of criminals had not been entirely successful, and that I could not comply with Lord Carnarvon's instructions, to submit proposals for placing the system of prison discipline on a sound basis in future, if the experiment were to be continued.
50. I called for returns showing the real effect of the experiment on the criminal population. I found that those returns justified a statement made in October 1872 by Mr. Douglas, the late Superintendent of the Hong Kong gaol, in a report on branding, to the effect that when a prisoner is deported with a gaol mark on his neck, which cannot be concealed and not removed without mutilation, it prevents him from getting an honest livelihood in his own country, or being taken as an emigrant, so that such a man is tempted to become a pirate or a robber near the shores of this Colony, upon which he is thus driven back. I sent to Lord Carnarvon a list of 39 prisoners branded and deported on one day, a short time before my arrival, which showed that long-sentence prisoners, short-sentence prisoners, prisoners whose character in gaol was described as "very bad," and those whose character was described as "very good" had all been treated in the same way, and sent in a batch to the mainland of China when one third of their sentences had been worked out.
51. Sir Brooke Robertson, Her Majesty's Consul at Canton, told me that he thought the system was not quite fair to the Chinese authorities nor to the Chinese villagers near Hong Kong. The Chief Justice of Hong Kong, in giving judgment in a case in which a Chinaman had been deported on an illegal warrant, publicly expressed the opinion that the system was hardly consistent with our treaty with China, and that the Government of China might justly complain of it. On this latter point the Governor who had started the experiment had officially recorded his opinion that "it suits this Government very well in a selfish point of view to get all its criminals exported to other countries."
52. But even taking as the guardian of the peace and good order of the Colony, a purely selfish view of it, I felt unable to sanction the continuance of the system. A police report, from the frontier of British Kowloong, that was submitted to me in the ordinary course of official business, said, "numbers of deported criminals frequent this neighbourhood, on the 8th instant 15 men who had been branded and banished from Hong Kong were counted in the streets of Chinese Kowloong and Sham Shui Po."
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Page 641
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1841-1886
HER MAJESTY'S COLONIAL, POSSESSIONS.
245
was altered so as to provide for the branding and deportation of prisoners who had...only served, one third of their sentences. Occasionally prisoners have been deported who had served from one fifth to one tenth only of their sentences. Thus legislative sanction was formally given to a system of remission of sentences entirely different from that established by Sir Hercules Robinson.
48. As the new system admitted of reducing the number of prisoners in the gaol at any moment, it also appeared to render his idea of a new gaol unnecessary.
*
}
+
49. I soon found that this experiment in the treatment of criminals had not been entirely successful, and that I could not comply with Lord Carnarvon's instructions, to submit proposals for placing the system of prison discipline on a sound basis in future, if the experiment were to be continued.
1
50, I called for returns showing the real effect of the experiment on the criminal, population. I found that those returns justified a statement made in October 1872 by Mr. Douglas, the late Superintendent of the Hong Kong gaol, in a report on branding, to the effect that when a prisoner is deported with a gaol mark on his neck, which cannot be concealed and not removed without mutilation, it prevents him from getting an honest livelihood in his own country, or being taken as an emigrant, so that such a man is tempted to become a pirate or a robber near the shores of this Colony, upon which he is thus driven back. I sent to Lord Carnarvon a list of 39 prisoners branded and deported on one day, a short time before my arrival, which showed that long-sentence prisoners, short-sentence prisoners, prisoners whose character in gaol was described as "very bad," and those whose character was described as "very good" had all been treated in the same way, and sent in a batch to the mainland of China when one third of their sentences had been worked out.
•
51. Sir Brooke Robertson, Her Majesty's Consul at Canton, told me that he thought the system was not quite fair to the Chinese authorities nor to the Chinese villagers near Hong Kong. The Chief Justice of Hong Kong, in giving judgment in a case in which ‘a. Chinaman had been deported on an illegal warrant, publicly expressed the opinion that the system was hardly con- sistent with our treaty with China, and that the Government of China might justly complain of it. On this latter point the Go- vernor who had started the experiment had officially recorded his opinion that "it suits this Government very well in a selfish point "of view to get all its criminals exported to other countries."
i
►
+
52. But even taking as the guardian of the peace and good order of the Colony, a purely selfish view of it, I felt unable to sanction the continuance of the system. A. police report, from the frontier of British Kowloong, that was submitted to me in the ordinary course of official business, said, "numbers of deported ".. criminals frequent this neighbourhood, on the 8th instant "15 men who had been branded and banished from Hong "Kong were counted in the streets of Chinese Kowloong and “Sham Shui Po."
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