ADDRESS FOR RETURNS. (Hansard, 3 May 1866)

THE EARL OF CARNARVON
, in moving for a Return of the Number of Criminals sentenced to Imprisonment for Life, from 1850 to the present Date, specifying the number of such life-sentenced Criminals released by Ticket-of-Leave or otherwise in each year, said: My Lords, I want to call the attention of your Lordships to the subject of life sentences, because the question will be raised when a Bill now before your Lordships' House gets into Committee, and it is desirable that the House should have all the information that may be available. I suppose it is pretty well known that a sentence of penal servitude for life in most cases resolves itself into one of twelve years penal servitude. This is known to the Judge who pronounces the sentence and to the prisoner who submits to it. It is, in fact, a great sham; it is known to be that, and it produces all the effects that a great sham always does. The character of these life sentences of twelve years duration does not differ in any respect from that of the ordinary sentences of twelve years penal servitude. Both commence with a period of separate confinement and pass on to a stage of associated labour on public works; both terminate by a conditional discharge with a ticket-of-leave. As a matter of fact, there is not a single prisoner who is not aware that, if he behaves well, he will be discharged at the end of twelve years. Up to this time there has been no great practical difficulty in the matter, because prisoners were transported. While transportation lasted, no doubt it was an admirable expedient. It benefited a colony by giving it labour; it benefited the convict by giving him a chance of a new career, and it benefited the mother-country by ridding her of the convict. All that has passed away; the colonies are closed to us, and the question before us is—how are we 345 to dispose of our criminals? At this moment there exists this glaring anomaly, that the next sentence to that of death is twelve years' penal servitude. If, indeed, it be desired that there should be no sentences between these two, well and good—I have nothing to say; but if, on the other hand, it is not considered desirable that you should step from twelve years penal servitude to death, let the point be considered, and either let the system be altered, or convert the nominal life sentence into a real one. But you have distinct evidence that the present nominal life sentence fails to produce any effect on the criminal population. I will quote the opinions of three different persons, who are very fair—perhaps, the best—samples that can be selected. One of them is a learned Judge, Baron Bramwell, whose experience is undoubted; another is the Director of Convict Establishments; and the third is an Inspector of Metropolitan Police. Baron Bramwell says— As at present administered, penal servitude is scarcely a punishment at all, in my opinion. Of course, he is speaking of penal servitude for life. Then comes Colonel Henderson, the [present Director of Convict Prisons, who says— All those men now under sentence of penal servitude for life are told that they can expect no remission whatever, but they do not believe it; they know perfectly well that ten or twelve or fourteen or fifteen years hence their cases will be brought forward, and that the crime will be almost forgotten; they are quite sure that something will happen, and that they will be released. Then lastly, comes the evidence of Mr. Tanner, an Inspector of Metropolitan Police; and he, as is natural, speaks more of details. He says— There are hundreds, or probably I may say a thousand persons in London who have very little fear of a penal servitude. He was then asked— Does the sentence of penal servitude for life make a sensible impression on them?—Yes; but they have all now a hope of getting out of it. But if it was penal servitude for life without hope of remission they would then look upon it as a very dreadful punishment?—I think so. Now, when you find that three different witnesses, all of whom are from their professional duties remarkably fitted to form an opinion, come to the same conclusion on the subject, though from different points of view, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they are right. Then there is another point which deserves consideration. I 346 think Parliament and the country are hardly aware what changes have of late years been made in regard to the classification of criminals. My Lords, these changes have been carried on so very gradually, and in some cases so imperceptibly, that Parliament is scarcely aware of them. But it is a matter of fact that we have now, what has never been the case in former years, a very complete system of classification. In the first place, juvenile offenders are now dealt with as a separate class. There is a separate legislation for them, and separate places where they are confined. Next, you have separate prisons, and a separate treatment for female criminals, to which may be further added many penitentiaries which are doing good service. Again, within the last year you passed an Act which assimilates the treatment in the various county prisons throughout the country, and brings all offenders sentenced from a few days to two years imprisonment into one uniform system. Beyond this, again, you have a further class of criminals who are sentenced to various periods of penal servitude, commencing at five years and going on to seven, ten, and possibly fourteen years. But from fourteen years you at once pass to the greatest sentence of all—namely, the sentence of death; and that, I think, is a great defect in the chain of penal procedure, and is very inconsistent with all you have done. My noble Friend reminds me that there are sentences of twenty years penal servitude. No doubt, some few sentences of twenty years have been passed, especially of late years; but they are few, and there is not a single instance, I believe, of a man being confined fifteen years. Now, there are, perhaps, some objections to the conversion of these nominal life sentences into real ones. The objection is twofold—first, on the ground of health; and secondly, on the ground of management. The objection on the ground of health will not hold for a moment; because, if you keep a man in prison for ten, fourteen, or fifteen years, there is no reason why the term should not be extended without injury to his health. But it is much more forcibly objected that if you confine a man for life you render the management of such criminals exceedingly difficult. It is said that if you take from a man all hope of going forth again into society, and give him no chance of the remission of his punishment, you deprive him of that element of hope which is most valuable in prison 347 discipline—you render him, in fact, a wild beast, and that the warder who goes into his cell goes there with his life in his hand. Now, I quite admit that would he a valid objection if you were to confine these prisoners for life in the same prisons and under the same regulations as other convicts; but of course my argument rests on the supposition that prisoners sentenced for life should be confined in a different prison suited to their wants. Nor can I imagine that there would be a real difficulty in establishing such a prison. The question is, whether you can present to these men sufficient inducements as a substitute for the hope of the final remission of their sentence. When a man is thus confined in prison, and shut out from all hope of ever going into the world again, his measure of things around him is entirely changed. He sees with different eyes, and matters which before he would have deemed trifling become to him of the greatest possible value. In the short imprisonments of county and borough gaols a difficulty at once analogous and of a different sort was felt. It was said, "How can you possibly hope by any system of reasonable inducements short of morally bribing them into work, to influence men committed for short terms?" As a matter of fact, however, experience has shown that we are perfectly able to deal with criminals under short sentences. I may, perhaps, without egotism, refer for a moment to a gaol which my noble Friend near me (the Earl of Malmesbury) knows as well as I do—I mean the gaol of the county of Hants. And I do so because, first of all, the system of that prison was made the basis of the Bill introduced and carried by the Home Secretary last year, and it was acknowledged by him to be substantially the model to which all the county and borough gaols ought to be assimilated; and secondly, because the experience of the system established at Winchester shows such remarkable results. We have so disposed matters that a very large amount of hard penal labour is exacted, and at the same time a very considerable amount also of what I may describe as voluntary exertion on the part of the prisoners is obtained. The system is worked out by a gradual relaxation of the penal and more irksome labour, and the substitution of less laborious work. The men are promoted from class to class, in exact proportion to the number of marks 348 gained, and become entitled to advantages of a most modest and even trifling nature. We find, under this system, that just in proportion as hard labour in conjunction with this mark system, which I have indicated, has been imposed upon and exacted from the men, a corresponding, and more than corresponding, diminution has taken place in the punishments inflicted for prison offences. Premising that Class I. includes prisoners during the first month of their imprisonment, I may observe that in the month of November, 1865, before the system was fully brought into effect, the number of prison offences in Class I. was fifty seven. In December, however, the mark system was extended to Class I., and the punishments fell to twenty-two. In January there were twenty-one, in February fourteen, and in March they decreased to thirteen. Now, that is a proof which no one can gainsay as to the power of such a system over the men while they are in prison; and if you can deal with men by such a system in county prisons, where almost every thing may be said to be unfavourable to you, how much more easy it would be to do so where you have the vast machinery of a convict establishment. Well, without arguing on this point, I will only say this much—that as a matter of fact it has been shown abroad that life sentences are perfectly possible. In one large prison at Ghent there are many prisoners confined under sentences of penal servitude either for twenty years or for life. I believe that it would be both advisable and practicable for prisoners confined for life to be separated from those sentenced to imprisonment for a term of years. But I must honestly confess that I should not be at all prepared to confine these life sentences to murder in the second degree as recommended in the Bill just introduced. I think it is necessary to extend that punishment to the hopelessly incorrigible class of persons who are continually being brought up in one court or another and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment without any hope of producing any good effect upon them. I find on referring to the judicial statistics of 1864 that of the 300,000 convicted criminals 20,000 were known thieves, 20,000 belonged to the vagrant class, and were, therefore, but little better, while 45,000 were suspicious characters, making a total of 85,000 out of 300,000 who, if they did not actually 349 belong to the criminal class, stood upon the border land which divides the criminal from the honest population. Again, the re-commitments to county and borough gaols amounted in the same year to 45,190, of whom 10,780 were re-committed above five times, and 3,975 above ten times. Every Chairman of Quarter Sessions, every Judge, must know that there are persons constantly coming before them who have been convicted twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty times, and there are recorded instances where persons have been convicted ninety times. It is perfectly clear that it is altogether hopeless to attempt to deal with persons of this description, who constitute a distinct class, with a distinct calling, and a distinct trade from honest men, and who look upon thieving as a regular and recognized profession. They go from one gaol to another, choosing as far as they can those which they regard as the most comfortable. When free they live by plundering the honest community, and when in gaol society has to furnish the funds requisite for their support, and as they become expert in their calling they become trainers of young thieves. Surely this state of things is as hopeless for the criminal as it is bad for society, and it would be a mercy to those persons to shut them up so that they could no longer injure the public and themselves. Believing as I do that the statistics I have mentioned will furnish us with much valuable information, I should wish them to be laid upon the table of the House.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR
said, that the Returns moved for by the noble Earl would scarcely give him the information he desired, because it was only within the last few years that criminals had been sentenced to penal servitude for life.

EARL GREY
said, that although afraid that the Returns would not contain much information, and he therefore doubted whether it would be advisable to call for them, he thought the House was much indebted to his noble Friend for having called its attention to the subject which he regarded as being of great importance. He agreed with the noble Earl that the 350 sentence of penal servitude for life did not produce the effect expected from it—which he attributed to the system upon which Judges had acted in awarding that punishment. In the days of transportation it was the order and very proper practice of Judges to pass the sentence of transportation for life upon criminals who had not been guilty of very aggravated crimes. They knew that, after a certain number of years, those on whom this sentence was passed, would be liberated under a ticket-of-leave and so be enabled to commence life anew under more favourable circumstances than if they were permitted to return to this country. The system of transportation had, however, been discontinued, and, therefore, the case was very much altered, because penal servitude for life was very different to transportation for life. Not sufficiently heeding the great change which had taken place in the system of punishment, Judges had passed sentences of penal servitude for life far too frequently, and the result had been that the severity of the sentence was invariably mitigated. One of the recommendations of the Commission which sat to inquire into this subject some short time since was that the punishment of penal servitude for life should be reserved for the most heinous offences, but that when such a sentence was passed it should be most rigidly adhered to, and the criminal should be made aware that, under no circumstances, would he be discharged from custody, He also agreed with the noble Earl that there should be some special places of confinement for those sentenced to penal servitude for life. He also thought that it would be far better for society were the class of criminals who were continually being convicted permanently shut up, and so prevented from continuing their depredations upon society. Such men ought undoubtedly to be subjected to long sentences, but a distinction ought, he thought, at the same time to be made between them and those who committed manslaughter of so bad a kind as to approach to the guilt of murder, or other crimes of like enormity. In cases of this sort, in which penal servitude for life was substituted for the capital punishment which a few years ago would have been inflicted, he thought no mitigation of the sentence should be granted, and he was glad to have learned that this principle was at least partially acted upon. He had heard from the Attorney General for Ireland that a man who 351 had been found guilty on a very aggravated charge of murder, but who, for reasons into which it was unnecessary to enter, had been reprieved, had been sent to Bermuda as a convict, and had, upon the breaking up of the convict establishment there, been brought back to Ireland, where it appeared to be the determination of the Irish Government to keep him in confinement. He hoped that determination would be adhered to, for he did not think such men ought to be allowed to be set at large. By passing very long sentences, such as twenty years penal servitude, on all crimes but the very worst which are not capital, life sentences might be confined to a very few cases, and then rigidly enforced. But owing to the very short time that had elapsed since the abandonment of transportation, and the very different practice as to passing life sentences which previously prevailed, the Returns his noble Friend proposed to call for would give an erroneous impression as to the rule now followed, and he therefore recommended that he should not press his Motion.

LORD HOUGHTON
observed, that although no doubt the system of non-productive labour of which the noble Earl opposite was the advocate might be attended with success in small establishments, like that at Winchester, it would be found not only extremely inconvenient, but very expensive in large establishments such as that of which he had experience. To abandon the system of productive employment would be, he contended, to throw an additional burden on the county rates for no good reason.