Better Prisons Prison reform is a good deal in the
air, and though some of the announcements about what the Home Secretary contemplates pretty clearly go beyond the facts, it is safe to assume that durance will become less vile before 1938 ends than it has been before. A Departmental Committee has made recommendations regarding persistent offenders, and a Bill is being drafted in accordance with its recommenda- tions. Penal servitude will be abolished, which means little, and the amount of a sentence that may be remitted as reward for good conduct is likely to be increased. Mean- while, since it is being increasingly recognised that the real hardship in being imprisoned lies in imprisonment itself, not in the treatment the prisoner receives, there is no reason why life in prison should not be made considerably less bleak than it is. The attitude of the Prison Commissioners is uniformly humane, but the funds at their disposal are limited, which explains why such amenities as wireless or film apparatus in prisons have to be provided through private benevolence, and why at this moment readers of The Spectator who owe their liberty to good conduct or good fortune are being invited (see p. 1175) to provide those classes of prisoners to whom wireless is permitted with wireless sets.
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