§ MR. STAVELEY-HILL (Staffordshire, Kingswinford)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will state the number 1330 and names of local prisons in England which are at present used for other than the temporary detention of persons sentenced to penal servitude; and whether the officers of such prisons are paid on the same scale as those of the recognised convict prisons.
§ *MR. GLADSTONEConvicts serve the preliminary period of separate confinement, which varies from three to nine months, at the following prisons— Chelmsford, Dorchester, Exeter, Gloucester, Lewes, Stafford. In addition to this, certain convicts selected for their good behaviour, who were sentenced in the north of England, serve their last year at Wakefield. Convicts in local prisons are in charge of the ordinary local prison staff, who are on a different scale of pay from the staff of convict prisons. These convicts being, except at Wake-field, in cellular confinement, and not employed in parties or gangs in the open, do not present the same difficulty of control as in the regular convict prisons, and the duty of supervising them does not differ from that of supervising ordinary local prisoners.