§ MR. KEARLEYI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) under what circumstances, and by what Judge, a convict returned for in the last Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and the Directors of Convict Prisons (Appendix No. 3) was sentenced to 29 years' penal servitude; (2) whether there is any limit to the number of specified years for which convicts can be sentenced in cases where the maximum punishment is penal servitude for life; and (3) what sentence in years would result in an equivalent to the actual imprisonment suffered by a convict sentenced to penal servitude for life, assuming satisfactory conduct in each case?
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (SIR MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEY, Lancashire, Blackpool)The sentence is made up of four sentences imposed by Mr. Justice Stephen for various offences of blackmailing, indecent assault, and robbery with violence. The prisoner had been previously convicted of blackmailing, and the offences were of the worst kind. The answer to the second paragraph is in the negative; to the third, in the case of a male convict, a sentence of 26 years eight months. In the present case the convict is to be treated as under a life sentence.