Crime and Punishment
THESE two books, both dealing with the treatment of law-breakers, are' complementary. Mr. Page is mainly concerned with the sentences imposed on convicted offenders and Mr. Benney with the prisons to which most of those convicted are sent. Both books are short and pithy, and the time spent in reading them is time well spent. Argument about the treatment of criminals is bound to lead to a discussion of the nature and purpose of punishment. Our judges and prisons are possibly to blame (and both Mr. Page and Mr. Benney blame them) for not having a clear idea of the object they hope to attain ; whether this is to punish or to reform the offender, or to deter others (as the Duke of Wellington succinctly put it, "The object of punishment is to terrorise the population"). This seems to be one of the questions on which authority cannot march much ahead of public opinion, and the confusion of purpose from which our penal institutions suffer is only a reflection of the confused thought of the community. Our ideas about punishment are based on an acceptance of human law as being to some extent a reflection of divine law (which makes law-breaking sinful), but are penetrated with the modern secular view which would make crime simply a social
problem, like unemployment. Mr. Page, after an admirable analysis of the problem, gives his support to the simple utilitarian axiom that !" the object of punishment is the common good of the community." As a rule of thumb for all concerned there could be none better, since it provides a reasoned basis for reform which no one can carp at.
The theme of Mr. Page's book is that the sentences imposed by our courts are often wrong, doing no good to the offender or the community ; that many of our judges (in the broadest sense of all those who judge cases in the courts) have insufficient knowledge of stow various penal institutions function to make a proper use of them, and that these institutions themselves are not sufficiently varied or lastic to provide the best sort of treatment in every case. Concisely, fthe usual practice is to punish the offence and not the offender. During the past hundred years we have equipped ourselves with a Comprehensive armoury of modulated punishments—probation, approved schools and borstals—in addition to prisons, and it is our fault if the best use is not made of them. But prison used too soon, or probation tised too late, may make reform impossible, and the be. st part of Mr. Page's book is his investigation of individual cases in which ill-suited sentences have helped to manufacture habitual criminals.
Mr. Page has a particular dislike of short sentences, and there can be no doubt that nine times out of ten they do no good at all. He believes that, when a prison sentence must be imposed, it would as a rule be better to make it long enough to give the reformative side of prison a chance. Mr. Benny has not so sanguine a view of the reforming potentialities of our prisons. His review of their present state is " based on the testimony contained in a hundred replies made by ex-prisoners to a questionnaire prepared by the Howard League for Penal Reform," most of whom were conscientious objectors. Such prisoners are, of course, more intelligent and articulate than the average, and their evidence is certainly of value, though their cases are outside the permanent pattern of prison life. Many of their complaints, in this book, against the manifestations of unintelligent authority need not be taken more tragically than were similar com- plaints from other citizens who, during the war, fell foul of rules and regulations in the services which they joined. But with the general thesis of Gaol Delivery—that our prisons fall clumsily between the two stools of retribution and reform—there can unfor- tunately be little quarrelling. In particular, Mr. Benney's condemna- tion of the existing prison buildings which, by their construction, make many improvements impossible, will be echoed by anyone who has had anything to do with them. EDWARD HODGKIN.
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