WHERE SHALL WE PUT OUR FELONS?
Iv the prevalence of violent and predacious crimes excites that hysterical alarm which breaks out in the cry of "gallows," what will be the state of feeling when the prisoners sentenced to short periods of penal servitude are let loose upon us ? That system began in 1853, so that the first detachment will be coming out in 1857. Already the revulsion has created one of those periodical paroxysms of severity," which, as Mr. M. D. Hill says,* cause the gallows to be venerated as an instrument of redemption, almost as much as "the cross." The panic fit is a reaction on the habitual "yearning for mild sentences" into which the people of this country have been persuaded by philanthropists. Forgery, stealing, and many other offences were punished by hanging, until the philanthropists and utilitarians abolished the practice ; " severity " was succeeded by a merciful " leniency" ; and when extraneous circumstances compelled Ministers to abandon convict transportation the notion of leniency suggested, that the more disagreeable transportation, of close imprisonment in this crowded land must be shorter than a sentence of " transportation " with the pleasures of going abroad to work, and all the contingent opportunities of trade in the towns or free life among the bushrangers. We are about to feel the consequence of that "leniency" in a grand recruitment of our certificated criminals ; and we may 'well press the alarming question What to do with our felons ?
One process would be the shortest of all—it would be to go back to the old principle of action and kill them. No place of safety so secure as the grave ; no example so impressive as the gallows ; no eradication of the vicious element in society so complete as extinction. The criminals are becoming too many for control : extirpate them, and they will neither accumulate, propagate, nor pervert. We fear, however, that "the age," whose opinions some people assert so confidently, is scarcely prepared for that capital operation ; so the next step is to send the criminals out of the -way. Simple exile would be the easiest mode ; but civilized nations object to being colonized by aliens, more especially by felons ; and. the Channel Islands are the only states permitted to keep up the practice of felon exile. Pack them off, then, to " some colony "; or if the very Colonies mutinously object, make a penal settlement, where there are no free colonists—select " some island." We .pass aside for the moment the absolute impossibility of reviving the Norfolk Island atrocities : before a Government could do that, it would have perforce to restudy the evidence of 1837 and the subsequent history of the Australias, and would then discover the impracticability of any such dream as renewal of transportation. But even if the convicts were "transported," unless it were for life, they must at some time or other return. Transportation, therefore, would not meet Mr. Hill's requirement, of preventing criminals once detected and caught from returning to prey upon society.
That is the practical want. It has always been felt, but felt doubly since the number of the criminal class has become excessive; while the increase of wealth has increased the temptations to violence, and the development of peaceful habits has made selfdefence more distasteful to the quiet citizen. The difficulty is not new. We talk about exposure to the assaults and depreciations of ticket-of-leave men, as if it were quite a new invention ; whereas we have only given a new name to an old thing. Those who are now so called promiscuously are not ticket-of-leave men in ninety-seven cases out of a hundred. They are nothing more nor less than returned convicts and discharged prisoners,--a class whom we must always have among us under any system of limited sentences. No doubt, the ticket-of-leave men, accurately so called, are a bad variety ; although they are an official importation. How did they come among us? When transportation was abolished on grounds of colonial policy, and it became necessary to consider how we should deal with the felon multitude left on our hands, certain prison-reformers suggested various expedients for diminishing the force of that army ; and among these, a detention of the worst classes of convicts until they should have undergone some test of their being less dangerous. The tests may be imperfect; the possibility
* In a charge delivered by the Recorder to the Grand Jury of Birmingham. Mr. Hill reviews the whole subject with a thorough mastery—very unlike the crude notions of some judges who see nothing that is not before them in court, or of smart writers, who take up a convenient bit of any . passing subject out of which they can spin sentences for "effect."
of really reforming hardened rogues may be doubted; but at all events, the general proposition tended to keep off the weight of a considerable portion, and that the worst portion, of the felonry. As a part of the process, the reformers suggested conditional pardons, revocable on a return to old practices. We have as yet had no completely developed machinery for carrying out this system ; we have no auxiliary " societes do patronage," such as are to be found in Bavaria and other Continental countries, aiding the discharged prisoner to find that employment which respectable society refuses to him; our highest prisongovernors have been avowed opponents of the system intrusted to their administration ; the very legislation has been crude, faltering, and " lenient." When conditional pardons were suggested, the slow official mind naturally associated the words with the only concrete form of such a thing which it knew. In Australia, convicts were allowed to go at large with a " ticket-of-leave "— and many of them did go at large, seeking whom they might devour, a terror to the honest settlers. The real intent of the proposed correctional discipline and tentative release was not understood, and it has never been adopted ; but that colonial abuse was imported ; and our towns can tell whether they like the import. An unreformed man out with ticket-of-leave, indeed, is no worse than an unreformed man discharged at the expiry of his sentence ; and a conditional pardon deferred for seven or ten years, or more, would manifestly be a relief in lieu of absolute discharge in four or five years. 'These varieties, whether of name or nature, signify comparatively little. Speaking broadly, it may be said that most of our worst culprits have been led into their worst courses by degrees : most of the convict men have been pickpockets and thieves when lads, and have been punished ; and the great class of adult criminals consists of discharged prisoners.
The question is, how to diminish that class—how to draw it off —to convert it into a class of not discharged prisoners. We cannot, in the present state of opinion, kill it off. We cannot transport it to the Colonies. If we carry it to "some island," we still only imprison it ; and the further the prison the greater the cost, the fewer the transports to it, the worse the surveillance. If it be a prison, it were best nearer home. If the men are once immured, it is desirable to make the prison less costly—in some degree self-supporting. And as so many human creatures are upon our hands, it is reasonable to ask if we cannot convert them to some use—if we cannot employ them, for the health of body and soul—if we cannot perhaps redeem a few. That is not the object of public punishment ; but when the culprits are in our keeping., common humanity and the simplest Christian feeling forbid the exclusion of that secondary object. The more so since, on reflection, rather formidable questions arise as to our own relation to the criminals. Are they an alien class of devils, simply our enemies, or are they not our fellow creatures ? Did any man ever inspect a large number of prisoners without noting that the general run is cursed at birth with some deficiency of faculties ? See the low heads, the rude features, the strangely-deformed countenances The strongest objection to this view lies in another yet more momentous reflection: what are we the non-criminal class, that we can speak so absolutely of those wretched outcasts? "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone." Are all the John Dean Paula, the Sadleirs, the Redpaths, detected ? How many of them are among us the "innocent," who are clamouring for " protection" ? There is one class of criminals more dangerous than those out on ticket-ofleave, and that consists of the unarraigned criminals. This is a delicate part of the subject to be discussed, but it cannot be overlooked. How can the respectable "London Scoundrels" cry aloud for treadmill and gallows, when culprits as hardened and as bold as any in Coldbath Fields are at large—when offenders as notorious are not only unscathed, but the very highest in the land are winking and conniving at their being let off? These cases are not roundly stated in print ; they are not the less notorious; they are known to ;the Maninis, the Paula and Agars, of prison society ; and wonderfully is the moral lesson inverted, when the sufferers by gallows and treadmill see their accomplices on the Bench and in Parliament, and know that the " crime " of the humble is humanely treated as the " disease " of the lordly or the "honourable."
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