In the House of Commons on Wednesday Mr. Churchill announced
some very important reforms in prison adminis- tration. A Bill is to be introduced in the autumn for securing to persons condemned to a fine a short interval for raising the money to pay it. Of a hundred and thirty-eight persons condemned to Wandsworth Prison in a single week for non- payment of fines, the Governor believes that forty or fifty could have paid if time had been allowed. In the next place, it is proposed to abolish imprisonment for persons under the age of twenty-one, except for grave crimes. A kind of defaulters' drill is to be substituted, which will save about fire thousand lads every year from making the acquaintance of prison life. Several alterations are also to be put in force in prison discipline itself. Special treatment is to be given to prisoners whose offences "involve no moral turpitude,"— surely a strange definition of political crimes. Solitary con- finement is to be reduced in length to a single month, and music and lectures are to be provided four times a year. Most important of all, however, is the abolition of the absurd system of ticket-of-leave. Under the new plan those who have left prison will cease at once from all connexion with the police, though they will he supervised by a properly organised system of prisoners' aid societies.
