Trouble in prisons
Sir: May I, as a former prison visitor, hazard a suggestion as to the cause of the present trouble in the prisons?
My view is that the prison warders feel (rightly in my opinion) that they are insufficiently protected against violence by prisoners. As a result the number of warders falls, recruitment is difficult, they become shorthanded, and therefore more exposed to assault than before, and so on round the vicious circle. The circumstances are aggravated by various new practices whereby prisoners are allowed increasingly to mix together and thus combine against authority. The carpenters' shop provides ample weapons that can be smuggled out. The only remedy, so it seems to me, is to restore corporal punishment, and its wellnigh automatic infliction for any serious assault on a warder.
I am aware that there have been two Royal Commissions on this subject, but my recollection is that the utmost they found was that corporal punishment could not be proved mathematically and statistically to be more of a deterrent than other punishments. They certainly did not have the hardihood to maintain that it was no deterrent ,at all. It is cheap, quick and easy to administer, and if, as I believe, its reintroduction would boost the morale of the prison warders the experiment would be well worth trying.
R. L. Travis Artillery Mansions, London SW1
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