HABITUAL INEBRIATES BILL. (Hansard, 22 July 1898)

§ *LORD BELPER

The Bill which I have to ask your Lordships to read a second time this evening is one which proposes an amendment in the law with regard to the treatment of habitual inebriates, who have been convicted either of serious or minor offences caused by drunkenness. The question of the habitual drunkard has been one which has attracted a considerable amount of attention in the country, and more than one Resolution and Bill has been brought before Parliament with regard to this subject. No less than three Committees have dealt with the question. In the first place, there was the Committee which was appointed by the late Home Secretary, Lord Llandaff, which was the Committee on the treatment of inebriates in 1873, and of that Mr. Wharton was Chairman. There was also the Scotch Committee on Habitual Offenders, which was appointed in 1895, and there is the Prison Committee which was appointed in 1895, also dealing with this question, and which confirmed the conclusions which had been come to by the other Committees. It will also, perhaps, be within the recollection of your Lordships that Lord Herschell brought forward a Bill on this question—three years ago—and the only reason that I refer to it is for the purpose of making it quite clear that the present Bill, which I have now the honour to ask your Lordships to read a second time, does not, as that Bill did, refer also to the case of inebriates who have not been convicted of any offence. This Bill proposes, as I said, to deal only with those who have brought themselves under the criminal law, and are habitual drunkards, and it proposes a curative treatment, with a sufficiently long detention in a reformatory to give them some chance of being successfully treated. My Lords, I think I may mention, as this is a somewhat new Bill, that it has passed through the House of Commons, not only with the assent, but with the general approval, of both sides of the House, and it did not even give rise to that difference of opinion which so many questions which are to deal with drink are calculated to excite. I think that any of your Lordships who have paid any attention to this question, 803 and especially those who have assisted in the administration of justice, especially in courts of summary jurisdiction, will have been well aware how inefficient and unsatisfactory the present law has been; that it has not been successful in deterring these offences of drunkenness from being repeated, and that, in fact, it is a matter of common notoriety that the class of people who are committed for drunken offences will come back repeatedly charged with the same offences. I do not wish to labour the matter at all with regard to the bringing before you of any evidence upon this point, but I think that I ought, perhaps, very shortly to refer you to a few of the facts which have been laid before the Home Office, and also before this House. There was a Memorial presented, I think, to this House some two years ago, and Lord Herschell referred to that in the speech which he made in the introduction of the Bill in 1895. That Memorial contained some very startling facts, but I will only refer to one or two of them. One was this: that out of 33,000 women who were sent to prison for drunkenness, 11,000—not less than 33 per cent.—had 10 convictions recorded against them. In one of the London prisons, at the time that the return in question was being prepared, there were 105 women who had been committed from 40 to 133 times in the course of the year, and there was one woman who had actually had 400 convictions against her, besides which her husband had also paid £200 in fines in connection with the same sort of case. My Lords, it is not only in the very large and populous places like London that these cases seem to occur. We have had, at the Home Office, a large number of requisitions from different parts of the country asking for legislation in this matter—by corporations, by boards of guardians, and by other authorities. I think there were some 50 of such applications in the first two months of this year. In small towns the cases seem to be quite as frequent as they are in other places. In one town, with a population of 12,000, six persons had been convicted of being drunk, who were described by the police as habitual drunkards; against three of these there had been 20 con- 804 victions for this sort of offence. In another case, in a town of about 25,000 population, there were 11 such persons convicted, of whom nine had over 20 convictions against them; and in another town of about 30,000 population there were 15 persons, of whom 11 had been convicted 25 times, and one had 76 convictions against him. There is also a rather striking return from a large union in London, in which they stated that 230 persons had been admitted to the insane wards during 1897 who were suffering from alcoholic excess. In all these cases alcohol is said to be the sole cause of the mental disturbance, and in many other cases which are not mentioned it is a contributing cause; and the guardians assert that they have been put to an expense of £1,000 owing to these particular cases. Then, to give you only one more fact, and to put to you the general result, I find that in the police returns for the year 1896 there were 23,300 people who were classed as habitual drunkards; 261 of these were proceeded against for indictable offences, and 23,000 were proceeded against summarily. These figures will give your Lordships some idea of the number of cases which may possibly have to be dealt with under this Measure. That, practically, is the case for the Bill. I think your Lordships will agree that these figures are sufficiently startling to show that the present law is not satisfactory, and that it requires some amendment. I would venture to point out, my Lords, that it is not surprising that the law is not satisfactory, because these people who have been indulging repeatedly in drink are practically in a state that they cannot be said to have any moral responsibility, and they cannot practically control themselves, or resist again indulging in these excesses which so often bring them within the clutches of the law. Now, my Lords, with regard to the proposals in the Bill, I will only, in the first instance, state that its provisions are founded on the Reports of those Committees which took the evidence of expert witnesses upon this matter, and which practically confirmed each other, and came to the same conclusion, that the only possible way of dealing with these cases is detention sufficiently long in a reformatory, under 805 some curative treatment. The Bill proposes that there shall be two sorts of reformatories established. In the first place, the Secretary of State may establish inebriate reformatories, which in this Bill are called State inebriate reformatories. These will be for the reception of the most serious case of offenders—those who have been convicted under the first clause of the Act of indictable1 offences, punishable with imprisonment or penal servitude. And with regard to these State inebriate reformatories the Secretary of State will make— regulations for the rule and management of any State inebriate reformatory, and for the classification, treatment, employment, and control of persons sent to it. The other class of reformatory is called certified inebriates' reformatories, and they are for the purpose, in the first instance, of dealing with cases of those who are habitual inebriates, and who are convicted of minor offences, and these certified inebriate reformatories may be established either by private means or by councils of counties, or by councils of boroughs, but before they are certified as inebriate reformatories they will have to conform to whatever conditions the Secretary of State thinks it desirable to put upon them. With regard to the two classes that this Bill proposes to deal with, the first class deals with the cases of those who have, upon indictment, been found guilty of an offence punishable with imprisonment or penal servitude. In the first instance, it will have to be proved that the offence was committed under the influence of drink, or that drunkenness was a contributing cause to the offence; and if the jury find the prisoner guilty of the offence they will also have to find whether he was an habitual drunkard under the description of the Act of 1879. In that case he may, in addition to or in substitution of any other sentence, be detained for a period not exceeding three years in a State inebriate reformatory, or other certified reformatory. The other eases which are dealt with in the second clause are the cases of offenders who are found guilty of any of the offences in the first schedule of this Act. That schedule contains all the ordinary cases of being guilty of drunkenness and dis- 806 orderliness, drunk while in charge of any carriage, horse, or steam-engine, failing when drunk to quit licensed premises when requested, being drunk in any street, and being guilty of riotous or indecent behaviour, and other things of that sort. With reference to this class of person, it will have to be proved that the offender is an habitual drunkard, but in addition to that he cannot be convicted under this Bill unless he has, within 12 months preceding the date of the commission of the offence, been convicted summarily at least three times of the same or a similar offence. He will also be charged on indictment unless he himself wishes to be dealt with summarily. My Lords, I think you will see that with regard to both of these clauses there is sufficient security that no man will be put on his trial, and be likely to be subject to this detention for this long period, unless it is absolutely proved that he is an habitual drunkard, and that he has not been reformed within the last 12 months, because, as is provided for in the second clause, he cannot be convicted unless he has been similarly convicted at least three times within that period. With regard to the other provisions of the Bill, I do not think I need trouble your Lordships at any length. With regard to the certified inebriate reformatories, the Bill proposes, by clause 5— The Secretary of State, on the application of the council of any county or borough or of any persons desirous of establishing an inebriate reformatory, may, if satisfied as to the fitness of the reformatory and of the persons proposing to maintain it, certify it as an inebriate reformatory, and thereupon, while the certificate is in force, the reformatory shall be a certified inebriate reformatory within the meaning of this Act. There is also a power taken for the Secretary of State being applied to to contribute to the maintenance of the inebriates in certified inebriate reformatories. The Act applies not only to Scotland, where the evidence was quite as strong as it is with regard to England, but also to Ireland. It was not originally intended to refer to Ireland, but it has been made to refer to Ireland on the express and general wish of those representing Irish constituencies in the other House. The only other part of the Bill to which I need 807 refer is with reference to clauses introduced for the purpose of making some necessary and desirable amendment of the Habitual Drunkards Act, 1879, which experience has found can be usefully amended to make it work more smoothly. My Lords, I hope I have said enough to convince your Lordships that it is a desirable thing that some attempt should be made to deal with this very serious question. I do not know whether there are any of your Lordships who would be inclined to object to this Bill. I cannot conceive that there is anyone who can consider that the present state of the law is a satisfactory one, and if there is any opposition to a Measure of this sort, I think it can only be on the ground that it is a somewhat novel procedure that is now being proposed. At the same time. I may venture to remind your Lordships that it is on the lines of the Reformatories Act, by which juvenile offenders are treated in a similar way, and kept under detention a sufficiently long time to make them forget the evil courses on which they have embarked, and though this is a Bill dealing with people of more mature age, and not with those of tender years, yet I think it will be at once admitted that if they are repeatedly guilty of such a series of offences as is shown in the cases which I have quoted to your Lordships, and if it is certain that they have no power or control over their own actions as far as drink is concerned, it is not only the right but the duty of the State to protect them from the consequences of their own actions, and also to protect society from these repeated cases of drunkenness and disorder which the present law does not seem to be able to deal with. I hope that you will give a Second Reading to this Bill, which is founded, as I have pointed out to your Lordships, on the experience and on the investigations of those who are most qualified to form an opinion upon this difficult subject.