Sessional_Paper_1886-1887 — Page 252

249

No.

8

87.

HONGKONG.

REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF VICTORIA GAOL FOR 1886.

Presented to the Legislative Council, by Command of His Excellency the Officer Administering the Government,

on the 21st January, 1887.

No. 17.

COLONIAL SECRETARY,

GAOL SUPERINTENDENT'S OFFICE,

HONGKONG, 14th January, 1887.

I beg to forward herewith Annual Statistical Return of Victoria Gaol for the year 1886, and beg at the same time to offer the following few observations.

2. In my previous year's Report I submitted that in our Gaol administration we ought to be guided, as far as circumstances allow, by the long and very successful experience of English Prison administration, where a combination of deterrent and reformatory Prison discipline had resulted in a great decrease of crime and reformation of the criminal classes, and as far as the very different conditions of this Gaol admitted, it has been my endeavour, during the past year, to carry out the system which in England has proved so successful.

3. It must, however, be remembered that in the peculiar position of Hongkong, Prison adminis- tration, however excellent, can have but a very small influence in diminishing the criminal population which is not so much bred in the Colony as imported from the neighbouring Chinese Provinces, and the greater or smaller influx of which is chiefly dependent on extraneous causes. While therefore we may expect that both the deterrent and reformatory results of judicious Prison administration may have considerable effect in reducing the proportion of re-convictions, the administration of the Gaol can have only slight influence, one way or another, on the increase or diminution of the floating criminal population confined in the Gaol. If, as recommended by me last year, criminals discharged from Gaol were by legislative enactment placed under Police supervision, we should be able to have some reliable statistics as to how far habitual criminals had been reformed into industrious and honest citizens. At present we can only judge vaguely, by comparing, year by year, the percentage of re-convictions. Some improvement is shewn in this respect in 1886. On the last day of the year 32 per cent. of the prisoners in Gaol were re-convicted prisoners, as against 35 per cent. of the previous year.

SUBORDINATE STAFF.

1. The Gaol Staff, besides the Warden and Head Turnkeys, consists of first and second Class Turnkeys, all Europeans, and first and second Class Assistant Turnkeys, now mostly Europeans, but having a proportion of coloured men and natives among them. These men have all been trained in the Gaol. None of them had any previous training in Gaol discipline. But more than half the Turnkeys now on the staff, including nearly all appointed during the past year, have been trained to discipline in the Army. The conduct of the European Officers during the year has been good; they were generally zealous and painstaking, they were just and judicious in their intercourse with prisoners and contributed much to the increased discipline which is very observable among the prisoners.

I

5. I had occasion, in my Report for 1885, to speak unfavorably regarding the coloured and native staff. I can now report a considerable improvement in that class. The most untrustworthy among them were weeded out. Those that remain are decidedly improved. I believe they have benefited from the example of the Europeans. The undue familiarity with prisoners, so observable at first, has now disappeared and I believe that illicit dealings between Turnkeys and prisoners have altogether ceased.

PRISON BUILDINGS.

6. The Prison buildings remain in the state in which they were at the date of my last Report. The difficulties we have to contend against from overcrowding in associated wards, and from want of proper work-shops, remain as before. They have already been pointed out by me at some length, and need not be repeated. I need only again record my opinion that a really satisfactory deterrent and reformatory Prison discipline cannot be established without the introduction of the separate system and suitable work-shops.