The Report of the Commissioners of Prisons for the year
ending March 31st, 1909, is by no means reassuring. The most formidable feature in the Report is the apparently unanimous opinion of the local prison authorities throughout the country that the growth in the number of commitments to local prisons is principally caused by unemployment. It should be noted that the Commissioners endorse the recom- mendations of the Departmental Committee of 1905, as well as of the recent Poor Law Commission, that habitual vagrants should be defined by statute and dealt with by detention, not as criminals. Some alteration of the law of vagrancy, they are convinced, is desirable to relieve prison authorities of " the present most unsatisfactory system of holding these men under successive short sentences, whence no good can result either to the community or to the individual himself."
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