QUESTIONS—OBSERVATIONS. (Hansard, 30 July 1889)

§ * LORD NORTON

My Lords, in rising to ask the Lord Chancellor whether the Government have any intention to deal next Session with the subject of the length of terms of penal servitude under the existing law, I may state that I have had a notice on the Paper some time to move for a revision of the Acts relating to penal servitude, with a view to the resumption of the minimum term of three years. Hearing that a Bill to that effect was in preparation at the Home Office I have delayed bringing forward this notice, but now that the Session is drawing to a close I wish to ask the Lord Chancellor, on behalf 1690 of the Government, whether any such measure is intended for next Session? I had myself a hand in the abolition of transportation, and served on the subsequent Committees which substituted the punishment of penal servitude for transportation, having resulted in the Acts of 1854 and 1857. A great mistake was made in measuring the terms of the new punishment by those of the old. In 1863 a Commission led to further lengthening those terms, under a panic caused by an increase of crime, which it was supposed that longer terms of penal servitude would check. But a Commission in 1878 repealed one of these longer terms, and reported that, in their opinion, penal servitude was sufficiently deterrent, but that it failed to reform, and they suggested that three years' imprisonment might usefully replace the five years' penal servitude. They, however, shrank from recommending Parliament to make repeated changes, and only proposed better classification against contamination in public works, and giving further trial to the existing system. I protested from the first against measuring penal servitude terms by the former terms of transportation. The two modes of treatment bore no relation or similarity to each other. Tentative changes had confessed the mistake, while all changes themselves have a bad effect on punishments. The highest and best opinion on the subject is that of Sir Edmund Du Cane. No man is better qualified to give an opinion upon the subject. He was not deterred from suggesting the change which he saw was called for, of shortening penal servitude sentences, by the happy fact of the recent diminution of crime. He knew that long punishments 1691 had not caused that diminution of crime, but that reformatories, industrial schools, discharged prisoners' aid, and education had been the causes of that result. Now, my Lords, the question is—whether these penal servitude sentences are not too long, and I would ask your Lordships to allow me to read a few lines from a publication of Sir Edmund Du Cane's on the subject. In a volume entitled Punishment and Prevention of Crime, 1885, he says:— The amount of punishment should he the least possible to effect its object. The assigning periods to penal servitude, derived from the days of transportation, and excluding intermediate periods of years, is difficult to justify, and may soon defeat the main object.… There is much evidence to prove that after six or seven years the deterrent effect on the prisoner diminishes, and is therefore likely to be less on those who hear his account after discharge than if he had come out before getting used to it. I have since received a letter from Sir Edmund Du Cane, strongly taking the view that the minimum term of three years' penal servitude should be resumed, adjusting it to the next preceding term of imprisonment, so that there should be a continually ascending scale of punishment, the two kinds being treated as stages of the same category, the latter ending in employment on public works. That is Sir Edmund Du Cane's view, and I think it will be conceded that his opinion has very great weight. He advocates a complete ascending scale of punishment and the resumption of the minimum term of three years, to follow an adjusted term of imprisonment preceding it. He says in that part of his pamphlet from which I have just read:— The shorter the term of punishment so that it effects its object the better—if it effects its main purpose, that of deterrence. Sir Edmund Du Cane is surely wise in thinking that the shorter punishments are the better if they secure their object. The chief object of punishment is to deter from the repetition of crime. As to reformation of character, that should be carefully kept in view incidentally, but it is not the primary object of punishment, and prison is the worse place for education. Sir E. Du Cane's book was criticised in the public press as not taking account of a third object in punishment—the keeping of dangerous characters out of the way. This, how- 1692 ever, I consider to be a most shortsighted and unprincipled consideration in dealing with criminals. It is not the-right object of punishment to get dangerous characters out of sight. We have responsibilities both to them and to the country which we must recognise. The principal object being to deter from repetition of crime, it follows that the shorter the process in gaining it the better. The longer terms not only fail to secure, or even impede, the object, but they waste thousands of able-bodied men in useless durance, while their wives and children are kept at public expense in workhouses. There is, moreover, a fatal weakness in long punishments. There is an uncertainty about their practical meaning which? tends to destroy their effect. Licenses on leave and mitigations are inseparable-No sentence of penal servitude is carried out to the full as it is passed. In that way, therefore, its effect is diminished, both as a deterrent to the evil-doers themselves, and as a warning to others. What is wanted is a revision of sentences both of imprisonment and penal servitude. There is nothing now between two years' imprisonment and five years' penal servitude. The matter is one of great importance, because penal servitude, if dealt out carelessly, and on wrong principles, must cause very great public mischief. I hope the Lord Chancellor will be able to say that the Government intend to deal with the subject as early as possible.