§ MR. BRADYasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If he intends making any alteration in the present mode of detaining persons charged with crime prior to their being committed or discharged after inquiry before a magistrate or magistrates?
MR. BRUCE,in reply, said, that the rules relating to the detention of prisoners were, under the Prisons Act of 1865, made by the Justices in Quarter 153 Sessions. They were subsequently laid before the Secretary of State, who affirmed them after consultation with the Inspectors of Prisons. Most of the existing prison rules had been made, examined, and affirmed in the years 1865 and 1866. It was competent to the Justices to make the rules which had been made, and to make further rules, and they ought undoubtedly in so doing to be guided by considerations of justice and humanity, and a due regard for the position of persons against whom no primâfacie charge had been proved. The Secretary of State had no power to initiate an alteration in the rules; but he had no doubt that after the attention which had been directed to the subject the Justices would examine the existing rules so as to modify any regulations that did not sufficiently provide for the proper treatment of untried prisoners.