§ MR. WALTERsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department a Question relative to a matter which had been much discussed in the county which he had the honour to represent. It appeared that at the last Summer Assizes in Berkshire a batch of prisoners were sentenced to penal servitude, and for some reason or other they had been detained in Reading Gaol up to a very few weeks of the present time, instead of being draughted off to the convict establishments. He believed that the usual practice of the Government was, when those establishments were overcrowded, to make an allowance of 4s. a week for the maintenance and lodging of every convict under sentence of penal sentence detained in other prisons; and the Berkshire magistrates felt aggrieved at being charged with these convicts beyond such a reasonable period as was necessary to provide for their removal. A bill for £200, on account of their maintenance and lodging, was sent to the Treasury; but as the Treasury declined to pay the bill, a good deal of correspondence ensued, and he undertook last year to ask a Question on the subject and elicit an answer. The Question, therefore, which he now desired to put to the right hon. Baronet was, Whether prisoners under sentence of penal servitude are liable to be detained, at the pleasure of the Home Office, for an indefinite period in the county gaols, without adequate compensation being made to the ratepayers of such counties for their maintenance and lodging during such period?
§ SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, in reply, that the practice was to remove all convicts sentenced to penal servitude at the Assizes or Quarter Sessions to the Convict Establishments especially prepared for that class of prisoners; but of course their removal must depend on the fact of there being room in the Convict Establishments. Unfortunately, an increase of crime took place throughout England in the course of last year, causing great difficulty in the speedy removal of these prisoners, and leading, no doubt, to serious inconvenience in many cases. Arrangements, however, were now made to provide more cells in several of the Convict Establishments, and he hoped that the inconvenience which had been experienced would be in future 1207 prevented thereby. He thought it should be a subject of consideration, when convicts of the class referred to were detained in county and borough prisons for an unusually long time, whether there ought not to be some additional allowance made on their account; but he trusted the inconvenience would not occur again.