OUR PRISON SYSTEM ri [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR, —Haying had some experience of prison work, I should like to make a few remarks in addition to Mr. Malcolm Macnaughtan's sensible article in your paper. I certainly agree as to the efficacy of a good whipping to boys. A great deal of nonsense is talked about the degrading effect of 'corporal chastisement. I have in my school days been well and soundly birched and caned ; I considered the punishment just, and it never occurred to me to think myself in any sense degraded. Things may have changed for the better 'in the last twenty years, but I have seen boys sent to prison for the most trifling offences—one I remember for bathing without a costume—and I have seen these boys marching round the exercise yard with caps cocked on one side, and with the natural dramatic sense of children playing the part of prisoners. Surely a good whipping was the proper punish- ment for these boys : to send them to prison was the most effective means to make them into criminals.
1 One of the most common offences of those admitted to prison is drunk and disorderly. A vivacious and frequently Irish temperament and a few glasses of beer do not seem to me to- be deserving of prison ; if the police, when one of these men is making a disturbance, would shut him up in the police cell, and in the morning when he was feeling cheap and miserable hand him over to his wife, it would, I think, have a more deterring influence than a week's imprisonment and would incidentally save the cost of the man's keep in prison and the ratepayers the cost of maintenance of his wife and family. One other matter, which I hesitate to
,write about but which is so important that it should. be 'discussed, is the not uncommon case of a prostitute being • sent in for a week's imprisonment, and discharged at the .end of the week in a highly contagious condition probably to 'infect others. Surely it should be made possible to keep these cases in until the contagious period was over.
The general- treatment of prisoners is humane and kindly, but I think much more might be done in the prisons to reclaim them, by the efforts of visitors who would undertake the work ; but this is too large a subject to discuss in a letter.
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