SHOOTING ESCAPING CONVICTS.

HL Deb 25 June 1912 vol 12 cc190-4

EARL RUSSELL rose to call attention to the practice of shooting escaping convicts, and to move to resolve— That in the opinion of this House the infliction of the penalty of death or wounding upon convicts who are seeking to escape should no longer be authorised by law.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, from time to time in the ordinary course of perusing the daily newspaper I read with a certain amount of shock that convicts who may have been attempting to escape, generally at Dartmoor, have been fired upon by the warders and have been more or less seriously wounded and taken to hospital, and in some, but fortunately rare, cases they have actually been killed. I wish to communicate to the House this afternoon, if possible, that sense of shock with which one reads in the year 1912 such announcements as that, and I wish to suggest to your Lordships that that particular method of restraining convicts and of keeping them in confinement is somewhat out of date and might be superseded by better methods. I recognise that in order to justify putting an end to a practice which is undoubtedly one of some antiquity one ought to show that the practice is no longer of any use. I hope also to persuade your Lordships that it comes from a rather barbarous time and should no longer exist, and that it is possible to exercise the necessary discipline and to recapture an escaped convict without taking these extreme measures.

I have not informed, myself as to the origin of this practice, and I do not know whether it rests upon any statutory enactment. I am rather inclined to think that it does not. I am inclined to think that it survives from the time when it was not unusual for force to be used by the Executive in cases of this kind. It is obvious that in the case of an escaping convict shooting is not necessary for the protection of the warders, because the' escaping convict is not an attacking convict. He is running away, endeavouring to escape observation and not offering fight; and we know that nowadays in the case of riots resulting from strikes or other reasons there is a great and natural reluctance to use lethal weapons against people even when they are actually threatening violence to those in authority and causing commotion. Now comes the question whether this practice is any longer necessary. I think if your Lordships follow the accounts of these occasional escapes in the newspapers you will observe that when a convict escapes he is invariably recaptured within a very short period, generally within twenty-four hours or at the extreme within from three to five days. It may, of course, be argued in support of the practice that while he is at large he is a danger to the ordinary peaceful population in the neighbourhood of the convict establishment from which he has escaped; but I think modern records rather tend to show that all he does as a rule is to break into some farmhouse for the purpose of stealing food or clothes. He is not any danger to life or more than a moderate danger to property, and if it was necessary to restrain him by firing at him because he was a danger to property I think that a somewhat similar argument might apply to burglars at large.

The convict is tried before a Judge and jury with every formality and every protection of law, and no matter how serious his offence may have been, except in a few rare cases where it is possible to order flogging, the Judge himself is not in a position to inflict corporal punishment, far less is the Judge in a position to order the man to be shot at. It seems rather strange that a person in the position of life and with the education of a warder should be placed in a position so much superior to that of the Judge at the trial who sentences the prisoner, and that once the prisoner has been sentenced he should so entirely lose his ordinary human rights as to become a fit object to be shot at by a warder if he tries to escape. The offence of escaping in itself is an offence which involves no moral turpitude. It is as natural for a convict to wish to escape as for a bird to try and escape from its cage. Therefore you cannot say that he is guilty at the moment of escaping of any conduct which deserves moral censure. When once a convict ceases to have the instinct to regain his liberty he has become what I suppose would be called a model prisoner, but a prisoner quite hopeless and useless to the community outside the prison because he has lost all sense of discipline, of self-control, and of self-respect.

Apart from the great power which you entrust to the warder, what justification is there nowadays for this practice? I should also like to call attention to the crimes for which prisoners may find them- selves in this position. I have heard of a man sentenced to three years penal servitude for breaking a plate-glass window. It is true that he had committed the offence before and had been warned that if it was repeated he would get penal servitude, and he did. But once having received this sentence he becomes liable to be seriously wounded or killed if, obeying some sudden hope for freedom, some sudden chance in a fog, he tries to run away; in that case he is liable to be shot at, and, it not killed, seriously wounded. I suggest to your Lordships that the time has gone past for dealing with our convicts on that principle. We are a civilised community, we have an excellent and efficient police force and communication by telephone and telegraph which make it almost impossible for any man to escape when sought for, and we need no longer adopt methods of a rude and uncivilised kind.

Nor is there any moral justification for adding so severe a punishment to the sentence already imposed on the man by the Court Your only right, I suggest, is to catch him again and to keep him for the term of his sentence, and in catching him you ought to use the most humane methods. You ought not to be inhuman any more than is absolutely necessary, and you have no more right to catch an escaping convict by shooting him than you would have to throw at him an anchor with a hook at the end and catch him in, that way. I do not know whether this question has been considered at the Home Office and whether the Home Office have asked themselves whether it is necessary to retain this power, or on what it rests; but I think the time has come when it might be considered, and if I could receive any hope that the matter would be considered and that other regulations might be made, retaining if you like the existence of this power but not exercising it, I should be glad to withdraw my Motion. But I do think that this practice no longer consorts with the state of this country. It is no longer fitting for us in these times to employ these somewhat barbarous methods for restraining convicts. Therefore I move the Motion standing in my name.

Moved to resolve, That in the opinion of this House the infliction of the penalty of death or wounding upon convicts who are seeking to escape should no longer be authorised by law.—(Earl Russell.)

THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD STRACHIE)

My Lords, in addressing this House for the first time. I know I may ask for that indulgence which your Lordships are always ready to extend to new Members. I also have another claim upon your indulgence, because not only do I speak in your. Lordships' House for the first time, but I am also on this occasion speaking on behalf of His Majesty's Government and representing the Home Office. I have had some experience in another place of representing a Department under like conditions, and I know the difficulties. It is therefore with the more sincerity that I ask for the kindly consideration of your Lordships in replying to the Motion of the noble Earl. As far as I gather, the noble Earl makes no charge against the warders or officials of convict prisons of doing anything which is outside their duty, or acting in any extreme way. The view of the noble Earl appears to be that this right of shooting at escaping convicts, many of them very desperate characters indeed, ought to be abolished, and, indeed, that there should be no arming of warders.

EARL RUSSELL

I did not say that.

LORD STRACIHE

As far as I gathered, the noble Earl deprecated shooting to prevent the escape of convicts. It does not matter whether it is inside or out. It might be equally necessary to use firearms in either case. The noble Earl certainly could not have sustained the suggestion that great care has not been taken by the authorities in the regulations regarding the use of fire-arms. Convicts are only fired on under careful regulations with minimum risk to life and limb. To show that that is the case, may I quote the regulation which has been laid clown by the Home Office on this point? It runs— The object of firing being mainly to induce a convict to stop whilst in the act of effecting his escape, it would be advisable that the first shot at least should be wide of the mark, and, if it should be necessary again to lire, that the aim should be low, which would avoid the danger of wounding a vital part and would at the same time be most effective in causing him to desist from his purpose. I think it will be clear to your Lordships that that principle has been acted upon when I inform you that during the period from 1880 to 1896 three convicts only were killed, and that since that period no convicts have been killed but only wounded when attempting to escape.

An inquiry was instituted in 1896, no doubt arising out of the deaths of these convicts, and the regulations to which I have referred were made in consequence. The noble Earl seemed to lose sight of the fact that a very large percentage of the men in these convict prisons are of a desperate character. They are inert who have been convicted, perhaps, of very serious offences against the subject, and of causing grievous bodily harm. Therefore it is very necessary that the warders, who are only in the proportion of ten per cent to the convicts, should be properly armed in order to prevent a mutiny, for these convicts are often employed in field work outside and in gangs in the quarries at Portland and other places. What would be the alternative if the suggestion of the noble Earl were adopted? It seems to me that the only alternative would be to chain these gangs together. It seems to me very undesirable, if not revolting, that you should have human beings at work in quarries chained together, as was the case in the Middle Ages.

The right of the restricted power to shoot at escaping convicts is necessary as a deterrent as well as a preventive against escape. It is also a deterrent from attacks upon warders. Warders are often attacked as it is, and I think your Lordships will agree that the Home Office is perfectly right in refusing to accept the noble Earl's Motion. As I have explained, this power is used with great care and under strict regulations, and since 1896 has not resulted in any serious injury, and certainly in no loss of life. In these circumstances, I submit that it would be very undesirable in the interests of good order and good management and preventing attempts at escape that this power should be abolished. Therefore on behalf of the Home Office I must resist the -Motion of the noble Earl.

On Question, Motion negatived.