ANOTHER VIEW OF WORMWOOD SCRUBS
[This article by another ex-prisoner is an answer to tir, artiolos Nye published recently, entitled " Wormwood Scrubs fro n the Inside.' —ED. Spectator.] TO a fellow ex-prisoner of His Majesty's Prison of Wormwood Scrubs and a contributor to the Spectator greeting ! I am critical of much that he has written, but I shall be forgiven--so strong is the bond of sympathy which unites us. Together we have heard the " bark " of the gaoler and grown accustomed to the jangle of the keys. I know and honour the fine courage which has led him after so black an experience to give in these pages so fair a picture of a " reformed " prison. But, alas ! it is misleading, for it is a drawing of his own heart rather than of the spirit of that place.
No ! Wormwood Scrubs is still a pitiful place and is like so to remain, for the reforms arc built on no true foundation. To understand this misfortune you must know something of the prisoners and of the inner workings of the prison. It has been pointed out that it is now kept for first offenders—a class apart—the men with a right to another chance. Yet nobody pauses to consider that this division of prisoners by our criminal administration into first offenders and others is so broad and indeter- minate that for practical purposes it is very nearly no division at all. The first offender, as I found at 'Worm- wood Scrubs, may be a man of any age from early man- hood to the late 'seventies. He may be in robust health or lie may have but a few weeks to live. He may have been convicted for any crime from street begging to bigamy or from petty theft to frauds involving many thousands of pounds. He can be and is drawn from any and every grade of society and may be of any race, colour or creed. His standard of education may range from the highest to sheer illiteracy, and his degree of moral guilt from the nominal to the gross.
First offenders ! Observe the strange fallacy that makes a first offence and first conviction synonymous. Under the old system which made the object of imprison- ment almost entirely punitive there was no great harm in casting them all higgledy-piggledy into one jail. With the coining of reformative aims the whole problem changes. The first step towards such reform is more lenient treatment and a relaxation of the old discipline which forbade any communication between prisoners. Over eighty years have passed since an inspector of prisons gave us the dictum : " Wherever there is associa- tion in prisons there must be demoralizing consequences." The whole prison system, it seems to me, has been built around and adapted to this principle. It worked harshly, but I came away from Wormwood Scrubs oppressed -by the thought that until there is some far more significant grading of prisoners this theory of discipline cannot be abandoned.
My impression was that the " old lag," a broken, bat- tered thing, had nothing like so great a power for evil as the young and triumphant thief or rogue who boasted of a long career of successful crime before he was caught. Such men have thieving and burglary for their only pro- fession, and I know full well that many on their release had no desire or intention but to return to their crooked ways of gaining a livelihood. These young braggarts spreading their tales of the joys of a life of crime receive anything but benefit from lenient treatment. Certainly it is not much use introducing them to the plays of William Shakespeare, lecturing to them on the functions of a County Council, and hoping for the best. Let me now say something of hygiene in Wormwood Scrubs as I found it. Details of the narrow prison cell need not be given—but regard its one window high up in the far wall. By way of ventilation two of the tiny panes, each but a few inches square, slide back. Underneath there is a small iron grid through which hot air passes during the daytime. Many men are locked in these cells from half-past five in the afternoon Until half-past six the next Morning: Perhaps over two hundred of the cells . off one narrow hall are occupied, and when first they are opened after reveille the air is so foul that warders coming in from outside find it nauseating.- The sanitary arrangements for the men when in the halls are dis- gusting—one regrets the word, but there is no other. Throughout my term in that prison I did not once see any disinfectant used for any purpose whatsoever.
Every man has to keep the floor of his cell scrubbed, but is not really encouraged in the exercise of similar ablutionary zeal toward his own person: He must wash in his cell, and to that end is equipped for his first months with a small iron can which when full holds about half a gallon of water, and a tin basin of similar capacity. These two inadequate receptacles must be kept in a high state of polish. It is not surprising to find that many prisoners sacrifice their own cleanliness in favour of that of their " tins." Each man on his arrival in prison is given clean sheets for his bed, but the blankets he finds awaiting him in his cell, and, so far as I could see, they were not fumi- gated when men were discharged. I feel bound to state that in my opinion the bedding given to me was ver- minous. But these are distasteful things, and I would introduce no more of them than is enough to show that if health and cleanliness of body are essential preliminary steps toward health and cleanliness of mind, then in Wormwood Scrubs there are reforms waiting of more obvious necessity than those already introduced.
And so to summarize the case against Wormwood Scrubs—the prisoners and the prison are ill-adapted to any such experiment. You cannot, it is my belief, by such slender means and with such slender resources change the character and object of imprisonment from the minitive to the reformative. A score of things which help to prove the truth of this I am forced to leave unsaid, for in one short article no place could be found for them. Life to-day in Wormwood Scrubs is, of course, better than it was six months ago. The one hope is that perhaps enough has there- been done to show that a prison truly " reformed " is a possibility.
By truly " reformed " I mean one with a new system of grading prisoners according to intelligence, age, educa- - tion, station in life, moral- guilt—or indeed classified according to any one of the real and reasonable divisions into which men fall. True reform also means new buildings—light, airy and sanitary, with modern work- shops where men can get the feel of a good day's work truly done. There is nobility in the desire to reclaim the young criminal, or, indeed, the man young in crime, and one would not have it destroyed by the mirage of a new Wormwood Scrubs. - •
SEVENTY-FIVE.
Previous page
