THOUGHTS ON PUNISHMENT. OCCASIONALLY we meet with sharp rebukes to

remind us—like the verdict of the Coroner's Jury on the man killed by the practice of the Northleach prison—that, blundering about from usage to ex- periment and from nostrum to nostrum in the treatment of crimi- nals we inflict a world of gratuitous and sometimes fatal misery, without the assurance that it repays us with a single advantage. It is to this day doubted whether our prisons and punishments effec- tually deter from crime ! We are thus driven back to first prin- ciples, in order to retrieve our way, in wandering mazes lost. Formerly our prisons were sinks of infamy, disease, and misery without redemption. The same terms may unhappily still be ap- plied in some cases ; but great improvements have taken place. It is to be observed that the worst "terrors" of the gaol—the tyran- nical harshness of the gaoler, filth, hardship, darkness, bad regi- men, and disease—have all been much mitigated, or abolished, in our best prisons ; and yet the efficacy of the prisons has increased at least in an equal ratio. To a well-regulated mind, a residence in Glasgow Bridewell would present no " terrors " : irksome it might be ; but each cell is light, airy, and warm ; the diet is suffi- cient, and the health of the prisoners generally improves ; and me- chanical employment is to be obtained by decent behaviour, to pass the time, with a few books. The fact that several persons have become voluntary inmates of the prison, does not more prove that the times are hard, than that the prison is not a terrible residence: members of the "criminal population" covet it. Yet for efficacy it ranks high.

It is not needed here to enter into any details to prove the in- efficiency of our present system of pains and penalties. It is noto- rious that the criminal is too seldom deterred. Nay, the very process of inflicting the penalty for minor offences has often, perhaps in the majority of cases, acted as a course of tuition in graver crimes : the trespasser in a turnip-field has learned to be a sheepstealer, the pickpocket a burglar, the ruffianly assaulter a murderer. The very sight of punishment has acted as an excitement to crime : an ex- ecution, the extreme penalty of the law, is the occasion for assembling multitudes to gloat over mortal contortions, to undergo a strong physical excitement leading to others of different kinds, to improve opportunities for thieving, and has even suggested murder to the chance-passenger with exasperated passions. Our past system has not only failed to abolish crime, but has made it. All are not agreed in the object of what is called punishment :

with some it is simply the protection of society ; others couple with that the improvement of the offender—an object thrown away by many in despair ; others again value it as retribution. By the last class only can punishment, in the literal sense of the term, be re- commended : retribution is the act of gratifying revenge, or the desire to inflict one evil as a vent to the angry feeling excited by another; but as it is not desirable to create one evil when we seek to anni- hilate another, we may reject the doctrine of retribution, and with it the ordinary theory of punishment.

What the first class of moralists mean by punishment, is simply the disabling of a mischievous agent, the crippling or confining of a criminal's action. This would be well, to a certain extent, if the criminal were crippled and confined for ever—removed : but against the man who is imprisoned for a certain term and reissues with the same motives to criminality, society obtains, not protec- tion, but only a temporary reprieve from injury. The work is not effectually done. On the contrary, the year's reprieve for society by the confinement of the criminal is most likely compensated by the exasperation of his vicious propensities ; so that he will do more mischief during the time that he is at large than he would have done during the whole of his life had he never gone to prison. In such case society is not protected. It follows that in the case

of retribution also, society is equally unprotected; only a senti- ment of revenge has been generally cultivated. In both cases, there is no gain; in both, there is a profitless evil inflicted on the criminal ; in the retribution case, there is a positive injury inflicted on society.

What the second class of moralists,-who couple protection of so-

ciety with amendment of the criminal, mean by punishment is disci- pline, or the compulsorily restricting the offender from evil and the compulsorily fitting him for the duties of society. The object is, to remove him from the immediate opportunity of doing mischief, and the sotraining him for the future, that on the like occasion be will of his own motion avoid doing mischief. That is the social purpose of all punishment, better called discipline.

The living in society and enjoying its advantages imply the ob- servance of conditions on which alone society and its advantages can subsist. If those conditions are not fulfilled, it is essential to the safety of society that it should exclude the recusant. That process would be easier if we could restore man to a primitive state, depriv- ing him of artificial social advantages, but leaving him natural advan- tages—transporting him from social to savage life. That, however, is impossible. We have not ready access to savage life—no access to life purely savage. Even if we had, the very fact of being born to society unfits the individual for savage life : he is either too feeble to use its original advantages, or he carries with him vices that con-

vert it from savage to depraved life. In either case, we condemn him to a cruel existence. We cannot therefore simply exclude the criminal from the social world : the next substitute, perhaps the only one, is to seclude him—to frame an artificial piece of de- sert, specially for the individual that will not maintain his right to live in society by observing its conditions.

But as we cannot restore the trespasser to primitive life and its liberty, society, who has done so little to fit him for its own laws

by the requisite training, is bound to restore him as soon as pos- sible to the social life and its liberty. Besides, to cage up human ferm is both inconvenient and dangerous, as already stated. The period of seclusion, therefore, should be a period of discipline.

All ignorant beings, including children, learn more by acts than precepts; and to be intelligible, readily comprehended and applied,

the act must be simple and directly bearing on the thing to be taught. Modern students of prison-discipline have recognized the fact that men err in ignorance—not perhaps in ignorance that they do wrong, but in ignorance of all the consequences. Ignorance with us is attested by the deficiency of the almost universal accom- plishments—reading, writing, arithmetic, and so forth ; and there- fore a confusion of ideas has begotten the notion that the ignorance must be remedied by " education " : and there are schools to teach the elements of reading, writing, arithmetic, and so forth. Those arts, however, are only useful as means of acquiring real know- ledge ; and no term of imprisonment, in the present state of edu- cational science, would suffice to impart such a scope of general education as would comprise the theory of virtue applicable to the vice of the trespasser. Criminals do not err because they do not know how to read or write ; nor even because they do not know that certain contingencies in their vicious course may entail disagree- able consequences—punishment, degradation, and misery ; but be- cause they are not convinced that those consequences are certain, and because the evil results to themselves are too remote to be within their comprehension and calculation, so as to overbalance the motive to wrong. The object, therefore, is to make the disci- pline represent the remoter and more terrible consequences by an immediate consequence, of a kind to make the criminal feel that his crime draws evil upon him, but without entailing that great and permanent injury which necessarily must result from un- checked crime—to associate the deterrent compulsion with the idea of the crime, and also to associate the idea of the avoidance of crime with the absence of those unpleasing consequences. And there ought to be a direct ratio between the degree and persistence in error and the relative privation, between the de- gree and persistence in just conduct and the relative fulness of advantage. According to the present plan, the "sentence" of the prisoner's " punishment " is fixed at the commencement of his seclusion. By that means, all association between the state of his motives and the " punishment " is destroyed. The new idea, borrowed from the practice in the case of transportation, that part of the original sentence should be remitted in considera- tion of good conduct, is a single and very slight exception.

The present system does not at all associate the idea of advantage with correct demeanour. It might easily do so. The secluded should feel that the instant he was in confinement he might begin to earn his own release—to restore himself to the advantages of society—by showing that he had fitted himself for the fulfilment of its duties. The object of prison-discipline should be to make the offender practically learn this lesson—If I do wrong, I lose the ad- vantages of society ; if I do right, I obtain them. The practical application of such principles would need a great deal more consideration than they have received, and we do not for a moment pretend to throw off a scheme, even incomplete ; but it may be as well to point out something of the manner in which they might be applied. The criminal would be tried and convicted as at present : the change would begin with the sentence of the judge; who would not say—" You have been found guilty of this crime, and you are sentenced to so many years imprisonment " ; but- " You have been proved to have committed this wron; ; you are unfit to remain at large ; and you must be sent into seclusion to be disciplined until you can be properly and safely released." The criminal would be handed over to the gaoler. This officer should be intrusted with large discretionary powers; and on every account he should be a person of discernment, unshakeable temper, and unfailing firmness and courage: his office should be accounted one of the highest trust and responsibility. It would be a great ad- vantage if there were not only classifications within each prison, but if each class of crimes had a prison to itself. The officers would then become more practised in dealing with that species of moral disease ; and the offender would be subject to no rules and no visitation of disgrace not belonging to his offence. Within the prison itself there should be many degrees of privation : introduced to an intermediate condition of restraint and privation, the prisoner should be made to feel, under the closest vigilance, that his hourly condition in prison would depend upon his own conduct ; that in proportion as he was sullen and con- tumacious he would sink in the scale of comfort, but that as he was orderly, cheerful, and penitent, his condition improved. Vigilance and skilful management might apply this coercive power so closely, that the prisoner's condition would be perceived to accord precisely with his conduct, and he would acquire a habit of regarding priva- tion or advantage as the result of his voluntary acts, good or bad. At the same time, plain and practical instruction should be given to him, especially in relation to his own offence, its injury to society, its ultimate-fruitlessness, the fate of criminals, and the like ; and his advance in the instruction thus afforded should be accompanied by a corresponding advance in his condition : as he was fitting himself for social advantages, he should feel their approach ; the ;Imre clearly he perceived his former turpitude, the more at the same time he would perceive that he was freeing himself from its direct consequences, the prison-privations. If be was without a trade, one should be taught him ; his views for the future should not only be consulted, but he should be assisted in their considera- tion; and if he should desire to exercise his industry in a distant land, he should be promised facilities for the purpose. As soon as he should appear to have comprehended his fault, and to have ac- quired such habits of thought and conduct as made it probable that be would not repeat it, his release should be given to him as of right ; but not till then. The prison-keeper should not give it as an indulgence : his office should be to discern when the prisoner was fit to receive it ; and then to give it, not as a favour in reward, but as a thing proper to be done.* For obvious reasons, a certain time must elapse before granting such a release to allow for the process of amendment, and to afford some test of its sincerity and permanency ; but as soon as these conditions were fulfilled, no matter how soon, the prisoner should find himself a free man. Should an unexpected time elapse, the law might provide for an inquest into the reasons why the criminal had not yet obtained his release—a second trial to ascertain whether he was not yet fit to be restored to society, and if not why not. The release, under such circumstances, would become a true certificate of character ; and the prisoner would come forth having gained in- stead of lost a character.

Does there appear in this vision of what might be, something too fanciful to realize ? Be it remembered, that many of our commonplaces at this day were extravagant flights of fancy less than a generation back. It may be objected, that the project con- templates a care of the criminals which the virtuous poor do not enjoy. To which it may be replied, that the criminal suffers, even in his crime, evils from which the virtuous poor are exempt ; and -- that if society interferes more in his fate, it has no right to inter- fere in like manner in the concerns of the unaccused. Besides, that smaller question is lost in the larger one—what is the best mode of arresting crime with a view to the welfare of society ? It may be further objected, that such a scheme would be costly. Not, again we say, if efficacious. The cost of any system of criminal dis- cipline is not to be estimated by the outlay at so much the bead, but by the results in proportion to the means. But it were idle to assail or defend glimpses of unconsidered schemes. The existing plans of discipline attempt to terrify from crime ; and to some doubtful ex- tent they succeed: they go so far as to seclude or even extirpate the detected trespasser; but, having him in their grasp, under the very screw of compulsion, they scarcely consider whether or not he may be bent from his warped and distorted condition. They only hurt him for what he has done, or little more. Our present part is to consider whether, on the face of it, it is more reasonable to deal out "retribution" for the past—profitlessly to " punish " the offender for what be cannot not have done ; or to use compulsion for the future—forcibly to prevent a repetition of the crime until we ascertain that the motive is extinct. As to making the criminal an example to others, the infliction of a penalty renders him so in a very imperfect degree : men do not always abstain from doing that which they see others suffer for doing, but they seldom draw back from doing that which they see others positively compelled to do. Inevitable compulsion is the parent of resignation and acquiescence. Familiarity blinds to the absurdity of the retributive system; but we should think lightly of that physician who read outward symp- toms of disease merely for the purpose of making his medicines nauseous in proportion to the malignity of the past malady, not as energetic as possible, and as bitter if needful, in order to induce health in future. There is perhaps not another class of subjects besides criminal discipline in which we bend all our energies to meddle with past results—as if we could alter any thing in the past !

* Excepting violence, nothing is so destructive of the influence of discipline as "indulgence." It spoils the logical sequence of good acts and good conse- quences, evil acts and evil consequences, upon which discipline depends: for it says to the trespasser, although you have not done what entitles you to a remission of privation, it shall be remitted ; and thus the remission no longer results from the conduct ot the disciple in a certain ratio, but from some mo- tives within the corrector : it becomes not a thing with a uniform pressure on the disciple, which be may acquire the power of regulating, but a chance on Which he may gamble. In so far as "indulgence" has any effect at all, disci- pline loses its effect, and to that extent the disciple is not under control, and is liable to relapse. Commonly the "indulgence" has to be balanced by a clue proportion of additional "punishment."