§ MR. LABOUCHEREasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to the fact that a certain Forster, who escaped from the Cambridge County Prison, and who was recaptured, was severely flogged, and that another convict confined in the same prison who attempted to escape was also flogged; whether he is aware that in Germany it is held that a prisoner commits no crime in escaping or endeavouring to escape from prison, and consequently is liable to no punishment for doing so, it being considered that if he succeeds the fault is with those whose business it is to prevent him; and, whether he will see that in future, if prisoners are punished for escaping or endeavouring to escape from prison, the punishment will not be a degrading one?
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT,in reply, said, that the question of the infliction of punishments in prison was not in the hands of the Prison Commissioners, or of the gaolers, but in those of the Visiting Committee. Whatever view might be taken in Germany of a prisoner escaping from prison, the view taken in England, in which he concurred, was that a prisoner escaping from prison committed a breach of the law; and certainly he should not interfere to prevent prisoners being punished for such a breach of the law. His hon. Friend did not suggest what the form of punishment should be which was not degrading.