If we seek an opinion from tramps and vagrants, they, if honest, will tell us that from time to time prison is a necessity to them; that if they cannot obtain entrance for vagrancy, why, then they will break somebody’s window and so make sure of prison comforts, for it is “better than the workhouse.”
If we consult youthful ex-prisoners, _i.e._ juvenile-adults, of whom unfortunately I know many, we get an altogether too favourable picture of prison life.
Many of them do not hesitate to tell us that they can “do it on their heads.” Though physically this may be an exaggeration, yet the expression conveys a pretty accurate description of the effect imprisonment has had upon them. Lest it be thought that I am satisfied with prisons as they are at present, I will point out the reforms which I consider necessary in our penal system and our prison administration.
1. There is too much indiscriminate and unnecessary gaoling; prisons should be the last resource, not, as too frequently happens, the first.
In England and Wales alone nearly 100,000 persons are committed to prison every year because they cannot promptly pay fines that have been imposed for minor offences.
I hold that every offender fined, if she or he possesses a settled home, should be allowed adequate time to pay the fine. Probably this would keep 40,000 first offenders out of prison every year, with a corresponding reduction in the number of second offenders in the following years.
What folly can equal the plan of bundling a decent man or youth into the prison van, and putting all the machinery of prison into operation because he cannot pay forthwith a few shillings!
2. The old law of restitution and reparation must be revised. The First Offenders Act, now superseded by the Probation Act, was not an unmixed blessing, for, while it kept thousands of dishonest persons out of prison, it never convinced them of the serious nature of dishonesty. To use their own expression, “they were jolly well out of it”; consequently the wrong done to the individual was not impressed upon them. The law had been satisfied, to them nothing else mattered.
At the instigation of the Howard Association, Mr. Gladstone added a clause to the Probation Act empowering courts of summary jurisdiction to order restitution for goods or money stolen up to the value of £10. But magistrates do not put this clause in force; yet such a clause is not only just, but merciful.