TREATMENT OF HABITUAL CRIMINALS. (Hansard, 21 March 1892)

§ LORD HERSCHELL
My Lords, I beg to ask whether Her Majesty's Government intend to inquire, by means of a Departmental Committee or otherwise, into the best mode of dealing with habitual criminals and especially habitual drunkards?

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HALSBURY)
In answer to my noble and learned Friend I may state that the Secretary of State is immediately about to proceed with the appointment of a Departmental Committee to inquire into the best mode of dealing with habitual drunkards. The other part of the question involves a subject of a very difficult character—namely, the treatment of habitual criminals, and whether or not an inquiry can hereafter be indirectly made upon that subject is a matter for the consideration of the Secretary of State.

§ LORD NORTON
My Lords, there can hardly, I think, be a subject of greater importance than that of the treatment of habitual criminality in this 1307 country; for, while we boast that crime in general is decreasing, to anybody who is in the habit of inspecting our prisons it is well known that a very large number of our prisoners have been re-committed more or less often, and that our present imprisonments have little effect upon that class of prisoner. With regard to habitual drunkards, we know that re-committals are even more frequent. I believe there are cases of women particularly who have been re-committed 50 or 60 times for habitual drunkenness, and the treatment of them in prison as criminals has been entirely ineffective. In their case the question is how far the establishment of institutions would be a remedy where either voluntarily or by compulsion they could be treated as the victims of a disease (like lunacy) rather than of a crime. But I understood the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack to take up the two subjects very distinctly and to give us some hope that, at all events, upon the subject of perpetual criminality the Government had some intention of making an inquiry before long.

THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY
My Lords, I quite share the wish of the noble Lord opposite (Lord Norton) that the consideration of the Government may result in having some inquiry as to the mode of dealing with habitual criminals. I think all your Lordships must be aware that there is such a great inconsistency in the sentences now passed upon habitual criminals as amounts almost to a scandal. I do not for a moment say that either of the different scales of punishment not have a great deal to say for themselves; but it does seem to me most desirable that the habitual criminal should not get a totally different sentence in one Court from what he gets in another. The subject is no doubt one of great difficulty, but it is one which I think is worthy of inquiry, and having myself paid some attention to the subject in years past, I think it is one that really does demand the attention of the Government.

§ THE PRIME MINISTER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of SALISBURY)
I should be sorry to leave on the mind of the noble Lord the impression that we looked with any hope to such an in- 1308 quiry as he proposes as likely to put a stop to the evil, which it undoubtedly is, of different and disproportionate sentences. The problem which occupies the mind of the noble Lord is the problem which occupied the mind of Charles V. a great many years ago—how to make a large number of watches keep even time. How are you to induce Judges, of every possible mode of thought and scale of juridical learning, to take exactly the same view with respect to all sentences that are brought before them? And when you descend from Judges to a lower class of officers, who are sometimes mixed up with political affairs—such officers as Liverpool is not unacquainted with—how are you to hope that you will have an absolute uniformity of judgment? It is a thing Very much to be desired, but I am afraid it is far beyond the reach of any Commission to procure.

§ LORD HERSCHELL
If I may be allowed I should like to say one word with reference to what the noble Marquess has said. I agree with him perfectly as to the difficulty of arriving at any such common understanding, but that difficulty is greatly aggravated when two different theories exist, both as to what ought to be done, and what it is expedient to do. For some time past it may be taken that in different parts of the country the two different theories have been applied. You have had, for a long enough period I think to give you facts that may be relied upon, the theory applied in some parts that you ought to take practically no notice of previous convictions in meting out the sentence for any particular offence; and in others the theory has been applied that previous convictions ought very materially to increase the sentence in case of subsequent conviction; and there has been a dispute as to what has been the result of giving these light sentences in cases of previous convictions. It is alleged by some that the result has been not to add to criminality; the allegation by others is that it has been. Now I think there would be considerable advantage in an inquiry which should determine or assist in the determination of that fact, which of course lies at the root of the application of any scale of punishment by those who have to apply it in par- 1309 ticular cases, and it strikes me that the application of these two theories has gone on long enough now to afford materials which would be very reliable if there were an inquiry which would give results that might be accepted as reliable—the difficulty now being that both parties claim an opposite fact as established by the experience that has been acquired.

§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Viscount CRANBROOK)
My Lords, it has been reported (I believe with some foundation) that at the late meeting of the Judges they had a proposition before them, which was favourably received by them, to have a Court of Appeal upon sentences with the power both to increase and to decrease them; and in that way it seems to me the difficulty would be more certainly met than by any of the modes which have been suggested.

§ LORD HERSCHELL
If my noble Friend will pardon me, the establishment of any Court to revise sentences would, if it were established, be very much assisted by such an inquiry as I suggest; because that inquiry is into the practical experience as to the result of these short sentences in cases of repeated convictions; and, unless you arrive at your facts upon this point, if you have a Court of Appeal for the purpose of revising sentences, they have not the material to assist them in judging what would be the result of shortening the sentences.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
I think I ought to say, lest I should be misunderstood in what I said before, that I read my noble and learned Friend's question, not as having reference to the passing of sentences on convicted prisoners, but as having reference to the treatment of them in prison—and I think my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary so read it also. But, as it has been so understood by my noble and learned Friend, I think I ought to say that that question is undoubtedly under the consideration of the Council of Judges. I have not yet received their Report, but they are now considering the question with reference to the possibility of so regulating the sentences that there should be in some Court or another the power of both increasing and decreasing 1310 those which do not seem to be appropriate to the offence to be punished. I am stating that as a matter of information to my noble and learned Friend because I think the answer was conceived with a different view from that with which my noble and learned Friend put his question.