THE FIRST-NIGHT PRISON
By ALEXANDER PATERSON
WHEN a man in London or the surrounding area has been arrested and brought before a Bench of Justices, they will, if they are satisfied that there is prima facie evidence of his guilt, remand him to a further hearing at their Court, or commit him for trial to a higher Court of Sessions or Assize (known in London as the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey). During this period of awaiting trial, if a Londoner, he is committed to Brixton Prison, and on the governor of that prison is thrown the responsibility for producing him at the appropriate Court on the prescribed date. There was no suggestion in former times that the prison authorities should use this pre-trial period for making any enquiry into the state of mind of the prisoner and inform the Court of their find- ings; that they should observe his bearing and conduct and consult his friends and relatives, with a view to assessing his sanity or insanity. The prisoners were received at Brixton, as at every prison in the country, only as specimens of suspicion who must be pro- duced at a certain place on a certain date.
Brixton is still the recruit depot for the English prisoner. The vast majority pass through its gates when they enter prison for the first time, and spend in a cell there their first night in prison— not chafing so much at the hardness of the bed or the coarseness of the sheets, but restless rather at the thought of the shame they have brought on themselves and their families. There is no need for Inquisition or Gestapo to torture English prisoners awaiting trial. They suffer enough through their own memories and fears.
But the function of a remand prison such as Brixton has changed entirely in the last forty years. It is no longer the mere cloak-room of the Courts, where a prisoner awaiting trial is securely lodged for production in the -dock. It has assumed a function that is scientific rather than automatic. The Court in modern times re- quire the prison authorities to inform them whether the prisoner produced for trial is found in the opinion of experts to be sane or insane, mentally deficient or mentally normal, and to be acquainted with any other relevant medical information or opinion. In order to frame such reports a remand prison becomes a centre of scientific examination and diagnosis. The cloak-room has become the laboratory ; the prison authorities are no longer the punctual and punctilious gaolers, but the trusted experts and advisers of the Bench. The experienced medical officer of a large prison is now regarded by judge and jury as the real exponent of forensic psychia- try, the only representative of the medical profession who can justly be regarded as having any right to be called a "criminal psychologist."
It is true that on occasion a doctor will appear in the witness-box for the defence, and seek by a cloud of words to obfuscate the obvious. Sometimes a young and inexperienced member of the Bench or Bar may be dazzled by the verbosity of the well-paid amateur, and inclined to belittle the unspectacular testimony of the prison medical officer, who has had experience of a thousand criminals for every one who has • engaged the services of the glib amateur. In due course, however, the prison medical service, led by such men as Dr. Dyer and Dr. W. Norwood East and Dr. Grier- son, in succession the Senior Medical Officers of Brixton Prison, has come into its own, and its members are acclaimed as unrivalled experts in their field. The task of examination and diagnosis in- volves the most patient investigation and the taking of very detailed notes and collation of reports. For, like every other scien- tific student, the prison medical officer treats no detail of conduct or conversation as unimportant. He interviews the man's friends and relatives, peruses his incoming and outgoing mail, and reads daily the reports of the trained hospital officers who have had him under observation by day and night. This modern conception of a remand
prison as a place of enquiry and examination has had its marked effect on the attitude and demeanour of the prison staff, from the governor to the gatekeeper.
The gradual development of the criminal law of this country nas cast and will cast other duties on those who guard the unconvicted or unsentenced prisoner. Under the provisions of the Prevention of Crime Act, 1908, Courts are required, before sentencing an adolescent to a period of Borstal training, to receive .and consider reports from the Prison Commission as to the fitness of the offender for this type of training. The only means whereby the Commis- sioners can acquire the information is furnished by the governor and medical officers of the remand prisons. This provision of the law has cast a heavy burden upon such officers. A large city prison, such as Liverpool, serving a great number of Courts in populous areas, will furnish several thousands of such reports in a year. It is possible that when Parliament again turns its attention to the prob- lems of the domestic criminal, and equips the Courts with more varied powers of treatment than they possess at present, the Court will 'require expert advice from those who have observed and examined the offender as to what form of treatment will be best suited to his requirements. This prescription of treatment repre- sents a more delicate duty thrown upon the handmaid to the Courts, destined to become ever more delicate as the alternative methods of treatment accorded by the criminal law increase in number.
It has been held by more enlightened forms of penal administra- tion that the proper classification of prisoners in different kinds of establishment is the starting-point of nearly all reform and pro- gress. Contamination is the most accursed feature of life in prison. Anyone walking out in the prison-yard will observe how rapidly and how relentlessly the newcomer acquires the habit and the mien of the accustomed prisoner, hearing his semi-obscure slang, adopt- ing his careless slouch, acquiring conceit in place of pride, cheapen- ing his sense of values, building his molehill laboriously into a mountain, and growing resentful when only a mouse emerges from his g.gantic grievance. There can be few places where false gods are more frequently found and more diligently followed than in the exercise rings of a large prison. It is, therefore, essential that certain bases of classification should be established to prevent prisons from becoming places of mutual contamination and corruption. The first basis is that of sex. There should be certain establishments for males and others for females, though it is doubtful whether we shall in this country follow the example of New York City, which at one time isolated in a separate block the members of an intermediate sex, with the results of which I was not impressed. In order ot priority the third basis of classification is clearly that of age, for the young should not be in hourly association with the old, while the fourth basis distinguishes between the offender who has and the offender who has not been in prison before.
In the case of persons awaiting trial in London today, these primary rules of classification are faithfully observed. Men go to Brixton ; women to Holloway ; boys to Wormwood Scrubs ; girls to Holloway. Any attempt at classification is of necessity a fissiparous affair, and the process can be refined till there is a separate estab- lishment appropriate to each individual offender. So it happens that it becomes necessary to organise a further degree of classification among those men consigned to Brixton Pr:son—by keeping in separate blocks those who are awaiting trial for the first time and those who have endured similar experiences on many previous occasions. This is not so difficult as may appear, for as the police bring them in their vans to the reception-block the sheep early separate themse1ves from the goats. It may not be possible to await the police-reports showing whith and which have not had previous convictions. The newcomers find the whole procedure of recep- tion very strange and rather terrifying. The old customers know exactly what is expected of them. They step up to the table and empty their pockets ; they almost run to the weighing-machine and the yardstick ; bare their chests to the hospital officer, and tell the medical officer where they keep their heart and their lungs. When they have thus obligingly sorted themselves out, the old hands are consigned to one block and the newcomers to another.
Now that the prison system is mercifully diversified in its degrees of complete confinement and comparative liberty, so that one man who is legally sentenced to five years of what the law still calls " penal servitude" may be immured for that period behind frozen walls in Dartmoor, whereas another man serving the same legal sentence may be wandering among the unwalled pastures of the countryside, yet another task is imposed upon remand prisons. They will be called upon to act as classification or allocation centres, examining men received with sentences from the Courts, and de- ciding whether this or that man requires the full security of a prison-wall or can with a reasonable degree of risk be trusted in an open camp. This is dearly a matter of grave responsibility, for. while public opinion might well be in favour of keeping a man with a long sentence to serve in as free an environment as is compatible with the safety of the community, confidence in the more progressive policy of the prison authorities will be rudely shaken if regrettable episodes occur too frequently. If the remand prisons fail in this function in a large number of cases, the policy of prison-camps and "open prisons" will be discredited, and the clock will be put back for twenty or fifty years. If, on the other hand, their discrimination proves wise, they will have played a memorable part in the whole sphere of penal administration.
Thus does the penal problem develop and expand. The remand prison starts as a mere cloak-room of the Courts with a staff of polite and punctual robots. Gradually fresh and more exacting duties are thrown upon it, and the staff is called upon to face scientific tasks of expert analysis and discrimination. So far it is facing them well.
Previous page
