§ MR. CHANNING (Northampton, E.)asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to the opinion expressed by Mr. Justice Wills, in his recent Memorandum as to the accommodation for prisoners in the Metropolitan Police Courts, to the effect that the accommodation is wholly insufficient to protect children and respectable women, who may in many cases have been arrested in error, and ought never to have been detained, from exposure to the most degrading companionship and moral contamination; and, whether he will, at the earliest moment, take steps 1711 to secure separate accommodation for child prisoners, and to carry out the recommendation of Mr. Justice Wills that—
At Courts where many women are brought up every day in the year, there should be some provision for the effectual separation of the sexes, and for the custody of women by a warder of their own sex, as well as some possible escape for respectable people, who may be innocent, from intolerable humiliation and torture?
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS) (Birmingham, E.)I have stated more than once in this House what steps I am taking to carry out the recommendations of Mr. Justice Wills, and of the Committee over which he presided, as to accommodation for prisoners in the Metropolitan Police Courts. The Report was no sooner published than I placed myself without delay in communication with the various authorities, by whose agency a better accommodation for prisoners awaiting trial could be secured. The particular recommendations referred to in the Question, with regard to the better protection and accommodation of children and women, are now being urged forward by me with a view to their being carried as far as possible into effect.