HC Deb 19 July 1911 vol 28 cc1024-6
Mr. JOHNSON

asked whether the Home Secretary is aware that on 27th May last a warrant was issued by the Mayor of Warwick for the apprehension of Beatrice M. A. Carter on three charges for obtaining goods by false pretences at Warwick on 14th January last, and was forwarded by the Warwick police to the chief constable of Reading with a request that he would cause the woman to be re-arrested on her discharge from Reading Prison, where she was imprisoned for a similar offence, of which she was convicted on 10th May last, the offence at Warwick for which the warrant was issued not having been mentioned or taken into consideration when sentence was passed at Reading; whether, without any notice or explanation to the Mayor of Warwick or the Warwick police, he directed that this warrant should not be executed; and will he say what particular circumstances there were in the case of Beatrice M. A. Carter which caused him, without notice to the justice who issued the warrant, the Mayor of Warwick, and without notice to the Warwick police, to interpose and prevent the execution of the warrant and due process of law; and whether he will now explain under which Statute he took the action he did in this case?

Mr. CHURCHILL

This woman had undergone a month's imprisonment for an offence committed at Reading; and, late on the last day of her sentence, I learned that a further warrant for her arrest had been issued at Warwick and would be executed by the Reading police on her release next morning. I thereupon telegraphed to the chief constable of Reading that I strongly deprecated the prisoner's re-arrest at the prison gate, and said that, if the Warwick police thought it necessary to prosecute for this further offence, they should first communicate with me. I had no time before taking this course to communicate with the Justices who issued the warrant or with the Warwick police. I have, of course, no statutory authority to "direct that a warrant should not be executed," and I did not give any such direction. I merely expressed a strong opinion that it was undesirable to execute it, and in doing so I was following the established practice of my predecessors. It has for many years past been the settled policy of the Home Office, in cases where a series of offences of a similar nature have been committed in different jurisdictions, to discourage the mechanical re-arrest of a prisoner at the prison gates to undergo one sentence after another, and circulars on the subject were issued to the police in 1896 and 1909. This policy and practice were formulated after consultation with the Lord Chief Justice and the Council of Judges, and the principles on which it is based received the approval of the Court of Criminal Appeal in the case of R. v. Syres. The present case appeared to me to be emphatically one in which re-arrest after undergoing sentence was undesirable; when the woman, whose previous character was excellent, was sentenced at Reading for a petty fraud, the court took into account the fact that it was one of a series of similar petty offences committed at other places, and the other charges were then dropped. The Warwick case was not, it is true, before the court, but it was one of the same series and as trivial as the others. Moreover, the woman was in feeble health, and the circumstances pointed strongly to her suffering from some form of mental weakness. I had not, though much pressed on the subject, felt justified in reducing the sentence passed at Reading; but I had reason to think that to re-arrest her and take her back to prison at the moment she was returning to her home would have a harmful effect on a woman in her condition; and, unless there were reasons for prosecution of which the police have given me no information, it would have been an act of useless cruelty.

Mr. JOHNSON

Would it not have been more courteous to have communicated with the Warwickshire authorities instead of writing them a sharp reprimand?

Mr. CHURCHILL

I wrote no sharp reprimand. All I did was, when the Warwickshire Chief Constable wrote to the Home Office and asked for information on the subject to furnish him with the information, but I took exception to some discourteous expressions, as I thought them, which occurred in his letter.

Mr. JOHNSON

Arising out of the answer as I heard it, the reply of the Home Secretary was to my mind—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order, order"]—very discourteous to the Warwickshire authorities.

Mr. CHURCHILL

I am quite prepared to lay the reply upon the Table.