CRIMINAL TREATMENT OF CRIMINALS.
LAZINESS is the great vice which obstructs the improvement of society. We do not mean the laziness of the disreputable classes, but the vice as it shows itself in the most respectable, and even in those who would consider themselves the teachers and leaders of their kind. It is little less than laziness which makes the im- patient class of reformers hasten to seize conclusions without de- veloping the necessary means to work out those conclusions, as though you could snatch loaves of bread out of the corn-field. And it is equally laziness which makes men assume that results cannot be attained, or even refuse to inquire into the means of at- taining them. At this moment there is a great mass of experience, sound reasoning, and positive knowledge, which tell us what we should do with our criminals; but the Legislature, and those who move the Legislature, are content to compromise with a great duty rather than go through a very moderate amount of proper labour in order to work out the question thoroughly. There are several interests at stake, all of them important. The object is to protect the innocent part of society—if in this view such a part can be said to exist—against the lawless irregularity of the criminal part. It may be conceded on a very simple principle of philosophy, that the shortest and cheapest mode to preserve society in a state of purity would be to kill off all criminals, and so to save the expense of their maintenance and render the contamination of other classes absolutely impossible. There are two considerations that preclude this Draconian plan. One is, that a cruel law contaminates those who enforce it, and in extirpating a minority of criminals we should create a majority of criminals. The second, yet more im- portant, has its root in the finite nature of human insight and the slowness of human experience to work out its own best conclu- sions. Some of the most important truths to which we have at- tained have at an early stage of their development been regarded as heresies which it was criminal to admit or even to discuss ; and if we were to adopt the plan of extirpating our criminals, we should, in our blundering foresight, confound the reformers with the criminals, and place extinction upon the progress of so- ciety without cutting out the cancer. As we cannot send our criminals to Hades, we must bestow them somewhere else. We cannot follow Punch's plan of driving them " to the world's edge and pitching them over." They must abide with us in some way ; and the question is, since they must exist, how they can be lodged so as to inflict no wanton suffering upon themselves and yet inflict a minimum of contamination upon society. The plan of transportation seemed, in a geographical sense, to be a substitute for dismissal to Hades ; but we cannot find any place in the world so little eligible for the ordinary pur- poses of life that emigrants not of the criminal class will fail to seek it ; and hence we established in the Australian Colonies, not a pure prison for criminal purposes, but a community with an enor- mous percentage of criminal element in it. When we tried to isolate the criminal element in Norfolk Island, we found ourselves manufacturing a concentration of crime which it became an im- piety to perpetuate. We discontinued the Norfolk Island forth- with, and followed it up with discontinuing Australia as the site for transportation. All these were rough and ready modes of getting rid of our criminals, without really considering what to do with them. We have put off that question to the present day, and still try to put it off; and, as usual, we are paid for our laziness with an increase of trouble and expense. Transportation was discontinued years ago : long before that time, those who had taken the trouble to inquire into the subject, like M. Demetz in France, Mr. M. D. Hill, Captain Maconochie, and Mr. Adderley in this country, had shown with more or less exactness of reasoning, and with great accuracy for practical pur- poses, the true manner of dealing with our criminals. It is pos- sible to diminish the amount of the criminal class at the source, by cutting off the supply, and converting a large proportion of our youth into honest citizens. With great numbers the casualties of an excessively poor home, life in the streets, total neglect of educa- tion, contamination by associating with depraved relatives, and other incidents, render it almost impossible to find the path to an honest livelihood ; and a dishonest course therefore became the only na- tural means of subsistence. In order to block out this great re- cruitment of the criminal forces, a plan of reformatory discipline would be required for children who have actually fallen into bad courses, and a system of education accessible to all for those who have not yet lapsed : but we have deferred the system of public education until we can settle certain squabbles upon abstract sec- tarian questions ; each sect preferring to keep our youth in a state of ignorance which exposes it to crime, rather than permit the risk that one sect or other will have a better chance of getting hold of the rising generation. The plan of reformatory institutions has been adopted ; we have Parkhurst, Redhill, and other such schools : but if the principle upon which these institutions are founded is sound—if there is any virtue in the success there attained—it is certain that the same course ought to be pursued with all the criminal youth, and not confined to a simple percentage of that class. It would be of little service to vaccinate one in ten of the population ; if we intend to prevent the prevalence of small- pox, our only course is to enforce vaccination for all. But because we are too lazy thoroughly to investigate the working of our pre- sent system and the necessary working of an improved system, we compromise the question by boasting of Redhill and Parkhurst, and leave nine-tenths of the population unvaccinated against a disease worse than smallpox. So likewise with regard to the adult criminals. There is great reason to suppose that the circumstances which determine the adoption of an honest or criminal course of life, in most cases, are very trivial. -Upon the whole, the understandings of this class are low; they lapse more from ignorance than malignity. A mo- dicum of well-supplied assistance would prevent crime in all but those few whose deformed nature places them in the order of lusus natures, and who in respect of criminal discipline may be regarded as practically insane. Their detention would be justified upon the same grounds that justify the detention of the insane. With re- gard to the other class, they are in the same condition so long as they are criminally disposed,—that is, they are insane, and should be in safe custody. As soon as they have ceased to be criminally disposed, and become disposed like ordinary people to earn their livelihood in an honest way, they are cured of their insanity and may safely go at large. Speaking generally, this cure can in most cases be well tested. If the criminal have cheerfully completed for a lengthened period a fair amount of task-work, he will have shown that he has acquired that frame of mind and those habits of hand which indicate social health. If in the course of that disci- pline he has found his condition generally speaking correspond with his own diligence in industry, there is the greater proba- bility that the species of blind logic thus taught to his sensations will direct him out in the world. But our legislators at large will not take the trouble of examining the rule so soundly laid down by Mr. M. D. Hill in addressing the Birmingham Grand Jury- " If they desired, as he did, to see that principle adopted, they must be pre- pared to strengthen the hands of Government by advocating such a change in the law as would enable those who administered it to retain In custody all such as were convicted of crime until they had, by sure and unequivocal tests, proved that they had the will and the power to gain an honest livelihood when at large. They must face that question. They must keep the maniac in prison, under restraint, unless he is satisfactorily proved to be At to return to society." The conclusions which we are enforcing have been conceded, weighed, set aside for after-thought, reexamined, sifted, reduced to their best working form, and at last consistently advocated by some of the most influential men of all parties in this country as well as in France. We have had meetings on the Continent and in Eng- land; and within the last fortnight, besides the conference of the friends of reformatory discipline at Birmingham, we have had M. Demetz of Mettray addressing friends at Bristol on the sub- ject, and an admirable address by Mr. M. D. Hill to the Grand Jury at Birmingham. By degrees, no doubt, these earnest, consistent, and laborious reformers are gaining ground ; they have established their case clearly on the grounds of logic and of practical experience; they are obstructed by nothing but that inherent laziness which continues the influence of bad laws in keeping up the numbers and force of the criminal part of the population. It is thus shown as clearly as it is possible to establish any social fact, that, monsters and accidents excepted, we might cut off the larger part of the supply of criminals and remove the larger portion of the permanent criminals from society : but society, too lazy to go into the detail, unwilling to take the respon- sibility which a conviction thus worked out could alone justify, again compromises the question with adult as well as juvenile of- fenders, and in lieu of detaining the culprit until he has proved his cure, determines that he shall be sentenced to an imprisonment for a definite period,—as if we said to a man labouring under in- sanity, or under any infectious disease, you shall go to the doctor's for two months, then to be driven forth upon society, cured or un- cured.
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