THIRD READING. (Hansard, 27 July 1891)

§ *LORD NORTON
My Lords, I wish to say a few words upon the Third Reading of this Bill. I want to ask whether there is any intention of renewing the proposal which was made in a most elaborate and able speech of the noble and learned Lord opposite (Lord Herschell) last year, for a revision of our secondary sentences. I think this Bill shows more than ever the importance of such a revision, and the urgent necessity 389 of it. The Bill very usefully restores the minimum term of penal servitude, which was most unfortunately omitted in an Act which was placed on the Statute Book during a panic in 1864; but it shows more glaringly than ever the want of anything like system in the sentences to secondary punishments, It enacts that a sentence of imprisonment for two years may be awarded in cases in which the Act requires a sentence of penal servitude. In official statements from the Home Office it has been urged lately that the two punishments have become the same. Imprisonment with hard labour and penal servitude are sentences practically in the same category of punishment, only differing in duration, and in the necessity in the longer term, that of penal servitude, of a period being passed on public works preparing for discharge. I think myself that penal servitude was altogether a mistaken phraseology in substituting for transportation a new punishment which really had nothing whatever to do with it. It does not carry a greater terror than a sentence to imprisonment with hard labour—rather the reverse, in consequence of the uncertainty with which it is necessarily carried out under the present system; but when two secondary punishments are decided to be punishments of the same kind, yet differently named, in the same category it is important that both the judges and criminals may understand what they mean. There is confusion in the series of punishments by making two punishments of the same kind designated differently, and still more as this Bill proposes to make one mean the other at the discretion of the Judge. I think this shows the necessity of revision. Nothing can be more striking to anybody who visits our prisons than the number of recommitments; in fact, you may say that a first commitment is a rarity in our prisons. Nine-tenths of the prisoners, have been convicted five or six, and even as many as twenty times. That shows an inefficacy in our existing form of secondary punishments, which is very much caused by indistinctness of phraseology, which makes the penal code unintelligible both to the Judges and to the criminals. What is wanted is something like a definite principle laid down as to the meaning of our punishments and cumulative sentences upon the repetision 390 of crime. I want to ask, especially, the noble and learned Lord opposite (Lord Herschell), whose Motion for a Commission of Inquiry was accompanied by a very full and most able statement of the reasons why such an inquiry should be carried out, whether this Bill is all that is necessary. I observe that the noble and learned Lord in that speech reflected also upon the system of police supervision upon the discharge of prisoners as very much requiring reconsideration. All these experiments require re-consideration from time to time; and the noble and learned Lord suggested, and I fully agree with his suggestion, that now our Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies are distributed throughout the whole of the kingdom, they might be made a much safer and more practical mode of enabling discharged prisoners to get into employment, and to get into industrial life, than the police supervision which must, with all its details of reporting from time to time, be a great hindrance to a man's restoration to anything like a feeling of self-respect as far as regards himself, and a great check upon employers taking him into their service. Everybody is delighted with the undoubted fact that crime is being very much reduced in this country; and, therefore, many people are hastily thinking, if that is the case, what is the use of looking into the system. The system must be good under which crime has been reduced. But the reduction of crime, I think, as your Lordships will allow, is attributable not to the perfection of our penal system—I think that has been rather adverse to the reduction of crime—but it is attributable to the extension of education and the reformatory system, and to the Discharged Prisoners' Aid system in this country. Those are the three causes of the great reduction of crime. But that is no reason why we should not look into the faulty system which is fraught with injury and impediment to the effective execution of the law. I rather address my question to the noble and learned Lord opposite, whether he has any intention to re-introduce early next Session the Motion urging the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into this subject which he so ably proposed last year?

§ LORD HERSCHELL
My Lords, in answer to the question put to me by the noble Lord, I certainly do feel as strongly as I did when I brought the matter before your Lordships somewhat more than a year ago, that the time has come when inquiry might be very usefully made into our present system of punishments, with a view to see whether there could not be a better gradation of sentences than now exists, and also to inquire into the question of these particular terms of punishments, imprisonment and penal servitude. That inquiry has become more necessary in consequence of the one term becoming more assimilated to the other by means of the present Bill. There can be no doubt that different views do prevail among those who administer the law, not merely as to what is expedient to be done in particular cases, but as to the principle of awarding sentences. There are those who believe that anything beyond the first offence must be followed by very severe sentences; there are others who believe that for even many offences committed after the first one, if they are small ones, the sentences inflicted ought not to be for periods of lengthened detention. Those views have been acted upon at Quarter Sessions on one side and the other for a long time past; and I think the time has now arrived when inquiry might usefully be made as to the effect which has been produced during several years past by the application of those different systems. I think the present state of things has gone on long enough to enable useful knowledge to be obtained as to what the results have been as regards the repetition of offences and the numbers of persons imprisoned under the various sentences. There are other matters to which the noble Lord has referred, as, for instance, whether we could improve the present system of supervision of prisoners who are to be placed under some supervision for a time after their sentences have expired, and adopt some system which shall not tend, as it is to be feared the present system tends, to render it difficult for those who have been convicted to obtain or keep employment. The truth is, our present system has been going on for a very considerable time without inquiry, and I cannot help thinking there is an advantage in from 392 time to time overhauling a system of this sort by means of inquiry to ascertain where we stand and what improvements might be made, and, therefore, entertaining these views, I still propose to call the attention of the House to the subject, and early next Session to ask your Lordships to consider whether it is not expedient that such an inquiry should be made by a Royal Commission, Committee, or otherwise.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
I am under the impression that my noble and learned Friend and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department have already agreed on an inquiry into this subject. That is the information that has reached me from the Home Secretary.

§ LORD HERSCHELL
No; the Home Secretary has communicated to me his willingness to grant an inquiry into the treatment of habitual drunkards, but he is not willing to extend it further.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
I think my noble and learned Friend has misunderstood the Home Secretary, or the Home Secretary has altered his mind since I made inquiry. If my noble and learned Friend will approach the Home Secretary I think he will find that he is not unprepared to have some inquiry on this subject.

*THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY
I am very glad to hear what the noble and learned Lord has said. I think it would be a pity to confine the inquiry to habitual drunkards. What is required is an inquiry upon the subject of habitual criminals. I had the honour to introduce a Bill into this House in 1869 which dealt with the treatment of habitual criminals. I think the time has arrived when it is very desirable to make some inquiry and see whether the system requires alteration and improvement, in these matters especially; and I am sure the noble Lord, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, will agree with me that it is quite necessary from time to time to look into the system and see whether changes are required. Such a step, of course, implies no want of confidence in the present Prison Commissioners. I remember when the inquiry took place upon penal servitude the very able Chairman of the Prison Commission, Sir Edmund Du Cane, told me that inquiries from time to time strengthened 393 the hands of the Prison Commission, for complaints which there is otherwise no opportunity of answering are very often shown to be groundless upon inquiry. The question of supervision was very carefully examined by the Commission, of which I was Chairman, and I would observe that the supervision exercised in cases of penal servitude is not supervision after the sentences have expired, but during the period when the prisoners are released upon license. It is very important to bear that in mind, because those who remember the introduction of the penal servitude sentences will recollect that the public were extremely alarmed when tickets-of-leave were first issued, and it was only when the system of the supervision of convicts, "on licence," as it is now called, was established, that the confidence of the public was restored. I entirely agree with those who think that the system of supervision should be enforced with the greatest care, so as not to impede the return to honest life of those who have committed crime, but as it is the fact that not a few of them do return to a course of crime, it is essential for public safety that there should be some means of ascertaining where these men are, and of being able to still watch them and know what they are doing. If that is done, as I believe it is done, with judgment by the police, I think such a system is useful and commendable; but, at the same time, with regard to the shorter terms of imprisonment followed by supervision, that system has never been examined into, and I should be glad if there were an inquiry into the matter. Then the grading of sentences requires careful consideration also, and especially the matter to which my noble and learned Friend referred, namely, the total differences of view which exist with regard to sentences which have been expressed with regard to those who have repeated their offences. A great number of people hold—I myself am one of them—that if a man has committed a long series of offences, not, perhaps, very serious, taking each of them, that man should be treated very differently from a man who commits an offence for the first time of the same kind. But some judges pursue the course of taking each offence upon its merits without reference to the previous history of the prisoner. 394 That being so, I think it is very desirable that the whole system should be examned into, because I am quite certain that every one will agree with me in saying that certainty in the infliction of punishment is of the greatest possible advantage. If people are not aware of what their punishment is to be, that must impair the efficacy of any system which may be adopted.