THE ENGLISH PRISON
IN January, 1936, Mr. H. W. Wicks was convicted at the Old Bailey of a criminal libel and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. The subsequent dismissal of his appeal was the end of a long and uniformly unsuccessful experience of litigation on his part. Mr. Wicks was persuaded—nay, he knew—that his "incarceration was due to the machinations of international finance." His innumerable enemies, who appear to be drawn from every walk of life from the Cabinet down, were not content even with putting him in prison. They got hold of spies, who were specially convicted and sentenced to the very same prison and allocated to the same bench in the same workshop, in order to report on Mr. Wicks. They tampered with Mr. Wicks's food. They went so far, it- would appear, as to try to have him certified. And no wonder, for Mr. Wicks was on his own admission "a thorn in the side of more than one Member of the British Cabinet."
There were compensations, however, for all this sinister activity Mr. Wicks had friends as mysterious and seemingly as ubiquitous as his enemies. In prison he learnt "exciting information," including future Budget secrets and advance information about the daily movements of an "important Cabinet Minister." He proved quite a hand at machination himself, for he elicited from a spy, snit to gaol expressly to observe him, the address of the secret meeting-place of an anti- British faction in Paris. This threw new light upon the- " extraordinary enmity" against himself, which emanated from persons "really engaged in espionage against British interests." The refusal of the prison authorities to allow Mr. Wicks to pass on his information was more mortifying than surprising, for did they not know all along that "the Govern- ment were anxious that my appeal should not succeed ? "
Mr. Wicks went to Wormwood Scrubs under the impression that he would be immediately released, even before his appeal was heard. On the first morning, he says, " I assumed that
I would see the Governor and the Chaplain, who would realise what had happened, and take steps to secure my immediate release." In spite of many setbacks, he was still hopeful on the third morning, when his bread and cocoa arrived. "This I presumed was a preliminary to my being called before the Governor and notified of my release at the usual hour of 8.30 a.m." Naturally the process of disillusionment was long and painful, for in proportion as Mr. Wicks asserted that he was innocent, the prison staff deduced that he was "barmy."
Mr. Wicks was a sincere believer, not only in his own inno- cence, but in that of most of his fellow-inmates. His chapters are adorned with a number of strange tales of prisoners who have pleaded guilty in order (heaven alone knows how) to avoid causing distress to their families, or because they were convinced that the case for the prosecution must collapse under the weight of its own iniquity. These stories have impressed Mr. Wicks, who is said to be a man of culture and attainments. But he is less than reasonable in expecting a prison Governer to assunie the duty- of sitting as a perpetual court of appeal. When a man has failed to impress his point of view upon a jury, it is too late for him to exonerate himself before the prison staff.
Yet although the officials are not, and cannot be, concerned with questions of miscarriage of justice, the Home Office has a direct and important responsibility in the matter. And in spite of his aptitude to impute ulterior motives of a most sinister and improbable. kind, the account which Mr. Wicks gives of his treatment by the Home Office is far from reassuring. If his facts are accurate, he has made out a good case for an inquiry. Prisoners' petitions are an essential safeguard against the perpetuation of miscarriages of justice : they are the exercise of a right which should for no consideration be whittled clown or rendered valueless. If they are ,unduly numerous, then they should be dealt with by a more numerous staff.
The extraordinary thing about Mr. Wick's's book is that when he forgets his own personal wrongs, he can become a rational and in some instances a most interesting critic. On the details of prison lifehe says much that is well worth reading. His severest criticism is of the clothes, the hygiene, and the work provided for the prisoners. He disputes the vague stories of physical brutality that have been put about. He seems to have been fortunate in his palate, for he found the food was eatable. And one may suppose, from his not men- tioning the deprivation of tobacco, that Mr. Wicks is a non- smoker, in which case he escaped what was until last year the most cruel and the most inmecetsary punishment of all.
Mr. Mark Denney contributes a pithy little book on prisons to the periodical " Fact," which appears under political auspices of an unimpressive kind. Mr. Benney has also been a prisoner : unlike Mr. Wicks, he is a born writer. He makes some good points. He argues that it is almost hopeless to introduce modern ideas into prisons accommodated in early nineteenth- century buildings designed for cellular confinement of the most depressing _kind: He. also raises the question of the extraordinary treatment meted out to the presumably innocent while on remand.
It is interesting to obterve in what respects these two very dissimilar critics agree. _ They both_ condemn the pay and conditions of the prison officers. They both condemn the exaggerated restriction of intercourse with the outside world. But, above all, they are at one in blaming the secrecy that surrounds the prison . system. It does seem inexplicable that in a country where almost every detail concerning the armed Bikes can be bought at the Statianal? Office, the Standing Orders by which prisons are regulated should be hidden even from the eyes of Members of Parliament : and the'sime anxiety to hush things-up is apparent in every activity of the prison commissioners. -. So long as this policy of mystery is maintained, the officials will be little justified in complaining of the `morbid curiosity of the public: So long as inforMation is grudged, criticism is sure to abound. Much of the. recent criticism has been nasty sniff, flavoured with po- liticai motive. But every prisoner deserves a hearing, even-though the outsider can only judge what he says by the look of his sincerity ; and both Mr. Wicks and Mr. Benney, in their different ways, have
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