ENGLISH AND IRISH PRISONS.

Wait did Colonel Jebb in his annual report on the progress, state, and prospects of English convict prisons, include observations on the Irish convict prisons ? Perhaps we shall be able to answer this question when we have glanced at the character of Colonel Jebb's observations and compared his view of Irish prisons with the facts.

Colonel Jebb, principal Director of English Convict Prisons, has placed on record his present ideas about the Irish prisons. He starts from the principle that "male convicts must be treated in masses rather than according to their individual characters," individuality must be more regarded with female convicts. Cer- tain " associated rooms" giving increased liberty of taking meals together, of reading, and of conversing during evenings, have been tried at the English Prison of Portland, taking men from the solitary cell of the prison and allowing some fifty of them to as- semble in each room ; but prison, Reverend Mr. Moran, and his succes- sors in the office of chaplain, "have each and all represented that there is a gradual loss of the moral advantages which can be gained," and have urged the discontinuance of the associated rooms. If it were proposed to select some of the best men for association, there would then be a loss in withdrawing the exemplary men who are spread through all the working parties. About a mile and. a half from the Portland prison 200 men are employed on the fortifications, of Tern-hill, a position which Colonel Jebb thinks analogous to that of the huts ; and if there were some additional indulgences granted to these men they might perhaps use more exertion, and might possibly be trusted to go a journey with mes- sages; but such tests of moral character would be valueless in an English prison. Colonel Jebb admits that assistance on discharge is " the secret of success in any system of reformatory discipline," but in the Irish case, he says, " only 75 per cent of the men al* selected from the body as anxious to enter on an honest course of life," and they are altogether different from the class of English convicts. However, he discovers one cause of the success in Ire- land, and he even intimates some effort in the same direction for England.

" The chief cause of the measure of success which has attended this ex- periment [in Ireland] may with greater probability be traced directly to the amount of assistance afforded to the men through his [Mr. Organ the chap- lain's] indefatigable labours in providing places or employment for them, in visiting them after discharge, in encouraging and protecting them at the period of their greatest difficulty the crisis of their fate. He modestly keeps its importance out of sight, but it appears nevertheless. * • * * New hopes, new resolutions, and better feelings have, in the majority of cases, been imparted to prisoners ; and it is inconsistent with common sense and common justice not to make an effort to give them a fair chance to bring them into play."

Experiments are in progress in forming a connecting link between the prisons and various benevolent societies in this country, which, it is hoped, may give more effect to those efforts.

The English director assumes from the experience gained in this country during the last four years and a half with the release of 7,500 convicts that " the prospect or continuance of employ- ment of the great majority only depends upon their fellow-work- men and neighbours not knowing that they were ticket-of-leave men."

But the circumstances in Ireland, he maintains, are different. " The intermediate system there is extended to males which I have shown would not be expedient here." Besides, later in his lucubrations he discovers that the object of imprisonment is, not the reformation of the prisoners, but "the prevention of crime" by deterring example ; and he thinks that the system has been as much softened in England as it should be.

"it is the clear and solemn duty of a Government to take measures for reforming a criminal whom the sentence of the law has placed under their control, and fitting him to become a better member of society. Much has been done, and much success has attended the efforts made in this direction ; but no plan has been thought of in which the punishment due to crime has been lost sight of. "it is my firm conviction that the Government, in giving sanction from time to time to the present carefully devised system, have gone quite as far in the way of encouragement—relaxation of discipline, and care for the pri- soner's best interests during confinement—as is either expedient or neces- sary. Convict discipline, as it now stands, plainly exhibits these features ; whilst those of the penal sentence which has been passed by the judge have not been obliterated."

On all these considerations, he deprecates the risk of such an experiment in England as that tried in Ireland. Most particu- larly he thinks, 'that however desirable it may be in a penal colony, and however successful in Ireland, it would be impossible in this country to carry out any general superintendence over discharged preachers by the police without interfering with the means of their obtaining employment, and thus a greater evil would be created than any good which could possibly follow." For throughout his remarks Colonel Jebb assumes the total difference between England and Ireland.

We shall soon perceive that the English Director labours under a total misconception of the facts as they have been elicited in the experience of the Irish system, and we shall understand why he so misconceives the facts as well as so misapplies them. In [re- land, Colonel Jebb's starting principle has been absolutely re- versed by experience. It has been ascertained that the effect of any system of discipline, castigation, moral restraint, or re- formation, is more effectual in proportion as it is carried out in- dividually, and this is principally the ease with regard to men. With regard to women, experience again has reversed the con- verse of this rule, for its operation is not so satisfactory in the ease of the female sex. It may generally be counted that any influence on women is less positive and certain in its effects, from a less fixity of character, a greater softness, and a tendency to be influenced by the circumstances of the present. Moreover, the whole sex being in a less responsible position, more governed by the men of the grade or circle to which the individual belongs, it necessarily follows that women are less often calledto account by the criminal law. Perhaps, also, something lies in the fact that women are on the whole more conscientious than men, and less addicted to evil of any kind. Whatever the causes may be, the women convicts are much fewer ; but being fewer, that very fact points out those who are convicted as being more reckless 111 proportion to the average of their sex than the convicted men are, less easy to be reined, and at the same time infinitely more difficult to be disposed of on discharge. Who will take a woman from prison ? The very proposition wears the aspect of an impos- sibility stated in terms. Hence the directors of Irish prisons have justly come to the conclusion that women are not so readily to be treated by the method of intermediate prisons, but by the intermediation of charitable institutions, such as the Golden Bridge and other admirable associations to which we have refer- red in former papers. But imagine setting the gentle hand of charity in this way to perform the great public duty with refer- ence to those masses of eight or ten thousand men, those legions of whose reformation Colonel Jebb will give no certificate ! The English Director thinks that intermediate treatment will not succeed because a gang of men employed at Vern Hill, with- out much superintendence, are not in a highly reformed state,

and the associated rooms at Portland have not succeeded. He might as well have drawn his conclusions from any chain-gang in

Australia employed in the back settlements, or from any number of convicts that he pleased to turn experimentally into a bar-par- lour. It is quite true, as Captain Crofton allows, that great ad- vantages are attained by dealiLg with men in masses, according to general rules which promote order and discipline • but such rules are not all sufficient The convict suddenly thrust out of that semi-military organization into society is transferred from a highly artifical state to the chaos and tempations which are the Or y condition of "the dangerous classes." The object of the intermediate prison is not to hold out luxury and better living as a "reward" for the good conduct of the prisoner,—not to offer such a dietary as that used at the Fulham prison for females, with its meat pies, puddings, baked meat, soup, vegetables, and general variety of "carte ",—not to promise the prize of high earnings—in England the gratuity of a discharged convict may be 14/. in Ireland it is 71. The object of the intermediate system is to secure a graduation of the prisoner's change. In that stage he is allowed some degree of association,—under supervision ; some degree of freedom —while he continues to employ it pro- perly; some opportunity for earning money. To a very modest extent, he receives a certain degree of instruction, particularly calculated to open his mind and to fix his attention upon his fu- ture responsibility in the world. He is under a treatment which does not allow hope itself to surprise him, but which makes it dawn gradually in his mind, while he is still under the chasten- ing influence of hard fare and hard work. He is not coaxed and pampered into better behaviour, but trained into better habits. Hence the hundred men who are associated in one of the work- ing huts of the Irish system continue to observe discipline and to fulfil their duties without any demoralizing effect from the association; but such treatment bears no resemblance to the labour gang at Vern Hill, or to the associated rooms for eating, .reading, and conversing of evenings at Portland. And of course what Colonel Jebb infers as probable if the Vern Hill and Port- land experiments were carried out further, has no force whatever against the actual experience of the hut system or of the in- termediate prisons in Ireland.

Amongst the most extraordinary assumptions of Colonel Jebb is the one that it is impossible to maintain a police supervision with- out such an interference as would deprive discharged convicts of

• their employment. Now it is remarkable that there has been a certain observation over discharged convicts, kept up without in- terference except in the eases of those individuals who have gone back to bad courses. Who is it that tells us this fact ? Sergeant Loome as a witness before the Transportation Committee of the Commons. And of what place does he speak ? Of London. Un- doubtedly there are inconveniences attending the observation of the police, who, when a man of previously bad character enters a neighbourhood, become suspicious of his movements, and for want of any definite plan resort to a species of watching which amounts to espionage, with much irritation to the individual and perhaps some danger to his employment; but this objection ceases when the police have definite instructions, and what is more when the police themselves are under supervision of higher officers anxious to secure the success of the process. This has been found in

Dublin.

The success of the Irish prisons we have already stated. Of

1327 prisoners discharged from the intermediate prisons since 1856, 511 were discharged unconditionally, 816 on licence. Of the 511 unconditionally discharged, five have been reconsigned to convict prisons. Colonel Jebb rather boasts that not more than twenty or thirty fall back in England—but of the remaining seventy per cent we have only negative information. Of 816 discharged on li- cence in Ireland, we learn that 467 have been reported on—many having come to England or Scotland, where there is no such super- vision. Only 30 [4 per cent] having been reconvicted ; while 45 have had their licences revoked, 15 of the number for keeping bad company, drunkenness, or neglect to report themselves. Fifty or sixty of the discharged convicts are under constant notice in Dub- lin city ; amongst them are men once notorious for evil and daring deeds, yet many of these have been for upwards of two years in regular daily work. This last paragraph seems to settle Colonel Jebb's melancholy fear that work would not be found for discharged convicts ; but in Captain Crofton's Notes we have the reason at once.

"The good conduct of the men for whom I have been fortunate enough to procure employment, through the right feelings of worthy employers, emboldens me to make repeated applications to the same employers for others of our men. To find continuous employment for the men is some- times rather difficult ; nor do I wish to have it inferred that even to find employment at all for them at all periods of the year, is easy. Much exertion is required, and a wide circle of friends necessary ; but all these, without the good conduct of the men themselves, would soon prove value- less. This I impress upon them inside and outside the Institution, that all depends upon their own conduct ; and I always keep before them how much harm even one man can do, and how far easier it is to make enemies for themselves and the system by the slighest act of misconduct, than to make friends by a long series of good, honest, and unexceptionable con- duct."

Yes, this is the reason for the success in Ireland,—the earnest personal activity of the superiors. One reason why Colonel Jebb has conceived so imperfect an idea of the facts in Ireland is, that he has looked to the reports of Captain Crofton and Mr. Organ eighteen months back, not to the annual report published • four months since, with a year's additional experience. Another reason is, that some time since, Colonel Jebb committed himself to a positive opinion that no intermediate system could be effectu- ally carried out, and that therefore transportation must be con- - tinned. And the reason why, in reporting on the English system,

• Colonel Jebb has gone aside to notice the Irish system is, that the great success across St. George's Channel stands as a shining re. buke of those officials who still neglect its practical example, and are trying to compromise between the truth which it has est.. ished and the assumptions which t has refuted.