Sessional_Paper_1892 — Page 469

HONGKONG,

CONFIDENTIAL.

465

No. 33

92

HONGKONG.

DESPATCH RESPECTING PRISON ACCOMMODATION,

Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor, on the 30th November, 1892.

SIR,

DOWNING STREET,

7th July, 1892.

1888,

581

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your confidential despatch of the 22nd of February last on the subject of the additional provision required for prison purposes at Hongkong.

In that despatch you urge me to reconsider the view which I had previously expressed that a new prison should be built, block by block, on a site different from that of the present prison, and you submit a scheme for adding to the accommodation provided by the existing buildings on the present restricted site.

2. I share your desire not to force upon the Colony a scheme for a new and expensive prison, if, as I admit is probable, such a measure would be met by protests from the un-official members of the Legislative Council and would be strongly opposed by public opinion on the spot; and assuming that another course can be found which will remove the present glaring deficiencies and make it possible to provide for the confinement of the criminal prisoners on the separate system, I shall be prepared to reconsider and modify my instructions. At the same time, I have not altered my opinion that the only fully satisfactory solution of the question would be the construction on a thoroughly open site of a new cellular prison.

3. I am prepared under all the circumstances to approve as a compromise, the enlargement of the present prison area, with additions to the existing prison buildings, and the provision of some additional space for exercise and for working the prisoners. The suggestions contained in your despatch do not however, as you will perceive, meet what I consider to be the requirements of the case, for they would involve the further overcrowding of a space already glaringly overcrowded; and in this and other respects they may be regarded as creating evils not now existing. At the same time I do not object to substituting a flat roof for the present ridge over the Convict working shed in the yard at the south-east angle of the building and surmounting this flat roof by a second one supported on columns, so as to give two open sheds for working instead of one.

4. Turning to more general matters, I may observe that in my opinion it must be regarded as a necessary feature in any scheme of compromise, that it should provide separate cells for the total number of male prisoners belonging to the criminal class calculated on an average of, say, the last four years. The average total of prisoners of all ages and sexes for that period was 546; and from these 566 may perhaps be deducted juveniles, women, debtors, non-criminal mendicants, defaulters, persons incarcerated for minor police offences and a certain proportion 4)2,185 of "gamblers." The balance of average numbers, which I have not the materials 546 for estimating correctly, should be regarded as the basis on which to calculate the

requirements of the Colony in the matter of cellular accommodation.

1889,......581 1990.

1891

-.....507

Governor Sir W. ROBINSON, K.C.M.G.,

&c.,

Sc.