Excerpt from Our Prisons
It is mere commonplace to say that the efficiency of our prison system is a matter of national importance; but, for all that, it needs saying. Though society is beginning to feel a real sense of responsibility toward those members of the community who have not had a fair chance in life, and though it is even able to grasp the fact that the right treatment of crime in prison is fruitful of good results only if followed up outside the gaol, it is extraordinarily ignorant of what is actually going on in the prison world.
How many well-educated people, actively interested, professionally and otherwise, in the social improvement of persons known to the police - not to mention the ordinary public - could undergo with credit an examination, say, from the Secretary to the Prison Commission, upon the routine of a warder's day's work in a local prison, the official duties of a governor or an inspector of prisons, of the medical officer of a gaol, or even of a chaplain under up-to-date conditions? While as to diet, punishments for misconduct, and rewards for diligence and good behaviour, and the life generally of the various classes of prisoners - they are as unfamiliar to most people as the domestic customs and tribal laws of the native races in Central Africa.
An attempt will be made in this, and in succeeding chapters, to set forth the full circumstances of life and administration in our prisons.
The first subject claiming attention is the central authority - the Prison Commission at Whitehall.
The Commission came into existence through the passing of the Prisons Bill of 1877. Up to that time, though an attempt had been previously made to deal with the matter by an Act in 1865, it had largely failed, and the prisons of this country were separately governed by local authorities. In 1876 there were 113 of these places, under the administration of some 2,000 Justices of the Peace.
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