Another Lighthouse?
Several references to this new Royal Com- mission, I see, describe it as the first full study of our penal system since the Gladstone com- mittee reported in 1895. Mr. Henry Brooke, to quote him again, says he hopes the Commission's report will be,'a lighthouse in penal history.' The Gladstone report certainly achieved that status. It was notable for its wide condemnation of the prison systetm as then existing. Offenders, it said, were treated 'too much as a hopeless and worth- less element of the community. . . . Prison discipline and treatment should be designed to maintain, stimulate, or awaken the higher sus- ceptibilities of prisoners . . . and whenever pos- sible to turn them out of prison better men and women than when they came in.' Again, and with particular relevance to today's dis- cussions: 'Prison• treatment should have as its primary and concurrent objects deterrence and reformation.' This attack upon the horrors of Victorian punitive prison methods aroused the national conscience. It led to immense changes. What will the new inquiry lead to, I wonder?
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