THE WEAK POINT OF CRIMINAL LAW REFORM. How to deal
with our criminal population ?—that is a question which just now agitates many of the most enlightened and prac- tical minds in the country. Lord Ashley attacks that devoted race—for it is to a great degree a separate caste—in its youthful branches, though not exclusively; Captain Maconochie perse- veres in pleading the cause of the convicted prisoner; Mr. Mat- thew Hill endeavours to amend.the lot of children convicts ; Mr. Frederick Hill carries the conscientious zeal and ability of his family beyond the dictate of mere official duty, in diligently pro- moting the improvement of prisons of all kinds within his dis- trict; Mr. Charles Pearson is engaged by the London Corpora- tion to consider the mode of dealing with criminal vagrants, male and female; Mr. Jackson, of the London City Mission, goes among thieves unconvicted but confessed in their calling, and attempts their reformation by religious influ- ence and the substantial aid of admission to refuges or emigration; and others, not less conscientious, perhaps not less able, are engaged in similar enterprises of philanthropy.* The plans proposed are as many as the prosecutors of inquiry : Lord Ashley proposes Ragged Schools and other means of rescuing the young before they are confirmed in crime ; Mr. Matthew Hill proposes to rescue the young criminal at his first conviction, by restoring him to industrious employment with an opportunity for reformation; Captain Maconochie, to increase the efficacy of corrective discipline by substituting .a sentence to a great task of industry for sentence to a fixed term of bondage ; Mr. Jackson strives:to supersede retributive discipline altogether, by the simple conversion of the criminal to virtue. Most prison- reformers are for improving the diet, and taking better care of the prisoner ; Mr. Charles Pearson reverts to an austerer view, and will not admit the criminal to equal enjoyment in that way with the unconvicted artisan. Most reformers now stand up for re- formation—some as the end of punishment, some as the means towards what they deem the true end of punishment—example; others abandon reformation'as hopeless, and go back to a Levitical principle of sheer retribution—treating the errant fellow creature as rustics treat a hawk or mousing owl, and using him as a scare- crow to frighten off other birds of prey. On the whole, the balance of opinion lies on the side of the milder and more pains- taking treatment, some lurking prejudices on the other side.
The advocates of reformatory plans can boast of some practical success : Lord Ashley can tell of lads, intelligent and well-dis- posed, who are manifestly rescued from a career of crime,; Mr. .Matthew Hill can reckon that so many boys out of a given number are reclaimed by his method; Captain Maconochie can relate marvellous but most veritable and credible tales of the be- nign influence which he acquired over the most abandoned cri- minals. But these excellent reformers are reproached also with their failures : Captain Maconochie removed, the men of Nor- folk Ireland reverted to their brutal state; a large percentage of Mr. Matthew Hill's boys relapse into vice.; and the Ragged -Schools place "a little knowledge" at the-service of "les classes clangereuses." So we attain to no settled conclusion : you may bandy statistics and mere opinion for evermore, and only create one impression to be effaced by its opposite, unless you show what common principle governs these varying and conflicting evidences.
That is the field of exploration hitherto neglected by the more enlightened investigators of 'criminal discipline : they do not -show on what principles of mental physiology and pathology their treatment operates; hence their observation of success or failure is informed by no distinct understanding, and their con- clusions, purely empirical, have no firm basis or mutual cohesion. Crime appears to originate in a variety of causes,—ignorance, early habits, congenital weakness to resist temptation, association 'with the hardened in the prisons meant for correction, and the
An abridgment of Mr. Charles Pearson's report to the Court of Aldermen was given in our last number; Mr. Matthew Bill's most recent statement was noticed 'among the provincial news in our number for the 28th October ; the reader will also consult the 14110-wing recent publications with advantage. " Thirteenth Report of the Inspectors of Prisons. Northern District. [Mr. Frederick 2111.) Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of her Majesty." "Secondary Punishment. The Mark System. By Captain Maconoehie, R.N., K.H. ; late Superintendent of Norfolk Island." Published by Mr. 011ivier. " The London City Mission Mag mine. November 1848." Published by Messrs. 13eCeY. [a twopenny fasciculus issued monthly bythe Society, and devoted this month leaanexpianatory StaMOUSIlt of Mr.Jackson'sproceedings•J impossibility of managing the transfer from a dishonest to an honest mode of livelihood. Mr. Jackson led Lord Ashley into a meeting of ascertained thieves, probably some hundreds in num- ber; and there the grand difficulty that appeared to the sponta- neous reformation at least of the majority was the impossibility 0, subsisting "till the next meeting." Mr. Jackson recommended prayer ; but his exhortation "produced no impression" : the dif- ficulty was only too palpable. One man rose and said, "My Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury, [a phrase he instantly corrected,] prayer is very good, but it will not fill an empty stomach." A young man was called forward, who by the earnestness of prayer and the most persevering exertion had found employment ; an example which had some effect. What was possible to one, however, must have been impracticable to a multitude ; and of course Mr. Jack- son's friends were obliged to return to business and await the turn of events. The causes of crime are known : how do the correc- tives apply to them? Tell us even how that most boasted of all correctives, example, operates. Not, we suspect, only through fear ; nor only through a calculation of self-interest. Both these motives, though dis- tinct in their operation, are very limited, and almost inoperative at the most critical periods, of great provocation or great tempta- tion. There is, however, one influence, formed of two elements combined, which possesses an irresistible sway over the untrained mind, whether of child or criminal. Let him feel discipline to be so all-pervading, so certain, and so immutable in its decree, that sooner or later it must be obeyed ; let him who is inclined to err observe that all are compelled, will they nill they, to fall into the set rule—that, be the stretch of criminal ingenuity or audacity what it may, the coercive power can stretch to still greater lengths, insomuch that it can never be overpassed—that obedience, sooner or later, is inevitable; let those things be so, and you es- tablish that sense of inevitable destiny which to the mind under training, infantine or criminal, is the great predisposing motive to a submissive obedience. On the other hand, let the discipline, though irresistible in power and inexorable in the compulsion of obedience, be tempered by that unfailing spirit of love—not a professed charity, but the real maternal desire for the welfare -of an erring child—which makes the trespasser feel that, though his trespass shall have gone never so far, an outlet of repentance is open to him, for ever ; and you still keep alive within his breast the sacred fire of human sympathy—that power, call it love or conscience or whatever you will, which makes us desire to do right and to have the good-will of our fellow creatures. It is perhaps inextinguishable in the most hardened hearts ; but if anything can extinguish the instinct, it must be an irrevocable sentence of retributive punishment. Establish, we say, the joint sense that the compulsion to do right is irresistible and inevitable, and that the penitent desire to do right can never be too late, and you establish the most powerful of all influences for the counteraction and correction of error. That is the mode, probably, in which discipline carried to the point of reformation operates, not only on the reformed culprit but by his example on others. But have the reformatory plans, hitherto devised empirically, been directly turned to that method, or sufficiently developed ? That is the question the answer to which is needed to complete the doctrine of the new school of discipli- narians.
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