HL Deb 03 March 1937 vol 104 cc435-48

THE EARL OF KINNOULL had the following Notice on the Paper:—To draw the attention of His Majesty's Government to the conditions obtaining in His Majesty's prisons and to ask whether any reforms are contemplated; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, it usually falls to my lot, when I have any Notice on the Order Paper, to speak at about seven o'clock, when most noble Lords have already gone away, no doubt to perform other duties, so I count myself exceptionally lucky this afternoon in that this Motion comes on so early, especially as it deals with a question which I regard as of the greatest importance. I should like at once to ask whether the idea of imprisonment to-day is partly one of revenge—revenge against the person who has broken the social code—or one of the reform of the prisoner. I have recently read a book, which I have no doubt some of your Lordships have also read because it has had fairly wide notice in the Press, and I believe in one Sunday newspaper it was printed as a serial. It is called "Walls Have Mouths," and is by a gentleman named Mr. Macartney, who is an ex-convict. If the statements in that book are true—and as far as I have been able to discover they have never been denied—anybody who has read it must think that if the object of prison is reform, then a great many reforms are necessary.

To start with, he deals with the time when he was on remand in Brixton Prison, before he was convicted. He says that he had considerable difficulty in obtaining writing materials in order to communicate with his solicitor, and that anything that he did write was first of all censored by the Governor and, if it contained anything of use to the prosecution, the information was given to the prosecution. I think that in the case of a person who is on remand and has not yet been convicted, if he is allowed bail he has free access to his solicitor or anybody else whom he wants to see; he is presumed to be innocent until he is convicted. If, on the other hand, he is not so fortunate as to be able to get bail, then he appears to be treated very much as if he were already guilty. I think that some measure of reform is certainly necessary here. You cannot have two positions; you cannot presume that a person who is allowed bail is not guilty, and presume—or almost presume—that a person who cannot get bail is guilty.

The author then goes on in this book to describe his experiences in Wands-worth Prison before he was sent to Park-hurst convict establishment. While he was at Wands-worth a man was hanged, and he says that you could hear the noise of the drop all over the prison. If that is so, surely it is barbarous. He also describes the ribald remarks which were shouted out by prisoners in their cells immediately that happened. I know that in Dickens one reads of that kind of ribald remark in the prisons of a century or so ago, but surely to-day it is a barbarous thing to allow other prisoners actually to hear the death sentence carried out and (as would naturally happen in a prison) to have that kind of remark made. It seems to me sheer barbarity.

He goes on to say that certain warders—and I am not saying a word against warders—in their conversations are rather curious. There is one particular passage which I shall quote to your Lordships showing what actually happened to him. When he got to Parkhurst he was put in the tailor's shop, and he says he was asked to stitch up the strap fasteners of a strait jacket, which he refused to do, as apparently prisoners have a right so to refuse to do. The principal warder came up to him and this conversation took place: 'Do you refuse to work, Macartney?' 'No, I only decline to do this particular job, and I am acting within my rights in declining,' I answered. 'How's that? Convicts have no rights! was the comforting reply. 'This is an article of restraint, and there is a Standing Order that no prisoner can be made to work upon such articles if he doesn't wish to. The job should be done by the instructor,' I replied … Warders have no right to talk to a prisoner in that fashion. Even if a man is a convict he surely still has some sort of rights left to him. I think there is room for reform there.

He goes on to say that up to 1934 there was no electric light in the prison. The real reason for that, I think, was that the authorities could get no money to put in electric light. It seems to me ridiculous that up to three years ago no electric light was in this prison; and even to-day there is no running water. Surely, we are out of date. We do not want to go back to the castles of two or three hundred years ago in which prisoners were locked up, yet that is what we seem to be doing. Dartmoor Prison is an example of that. In the Du Parcq Report it was stated quite freely that the gaolers and all the officials objected to the prison. It is really a beastly prison, yet nothing has been done about it. It has been stated that the cells were very damp, but I understand that that is not so to-day. But the prison is definitely out of date and should be done away with altogether. He says also a word on the strong cell arrangement. I do not want to say much about that, because it was raised in another place, but he says that at Park-burst in the strong cells there are no windows or heating, and men occasionally put in a winter without a blanket and mostly with only a shirt on. I do not think that in the winter one would treat an animal in that way—put it in a cold cell with only a blanket to lie on. It seems to be going beyond the bounds to treat convicts in that way.

Another thing that struck me in reading the book was the unnecessary amount of duplication that goes on as you pass from one prison to another. You come up before the medical officer and have to give your whole medical history—indeed, your whole history—over and over again although it is all written down in the form in front of him. That seems to me an unnecessary waste of time, and also it must be very galling to the unfortunate convict to have to keep on repeating his previous history, convictions and so on. That sort of thing could be cut out. Another thing that must get on the convict's nerves, as I am sure it would get on the nerves of any of your Lordships who had the misfortune to be sent to prison, is the unnecessary amount of nagging that goes on by warders in the form of orders to "Shut up," and "Keep in line," and that type of thing. When nobody is doing anything there seems to be a gramophone record requesting the convicts to "Stop talking" and "If you don't you will be reported".

I can well understand that that type of thing drives a person nearly insane after any length of time in prison. It must be terrible. Surely that need not go on then the long hours of confine- ment must be perfectly dreadful. Take Saturday and Sunday. On Saturdays convicts are locked up for twenty-three hours with just one hour for exercise, with no one to talk to and very little reading matter supplied to them. Can you wonder that after a year or two of that a man eventually breaks out, loses all reason for the time being, and does what is called "smashing up" in his cell, breaking everything in the cell, tearing all the clothes up, and acts of that description? Surely, that treatment is unnecessary. There again it is a question of money. The Government will not spend money on having more warders; that is what it comes to. These people have to have a week-end off, and the only way they can do it is by keeping the unfortunate convicts locked up. The Government are willing to spend £1,500,000,000 on armaments, but will not spend even a few hundreds to remedy a position of this description. If one only looked upon prison as a place of reform instead of as a place purely of revenge it would do something to reform them. These long hours of solitary confinement must be perfectly terrible to anyone undergoing them.

The next question is the question of food. I am not suggesting that convicts should be fed on caviare or anything of that description, but if one gets exactly the same breakfast every morning for months one will eventually get so sick of it as not to be able to look at it. Medical men say that monotony of diet over a long period is deleterious to health. In Macartney's book it is stated that the prison doctors at Parkhurst find it necessary to put convicts in hospital for a fortnight and give them hospital diet in order to get away from the routine which they undergo—every two years, I think it is. It does seem to me that the food might be varied a little so that people may be saved the terrible monotony that now exists.

Another thing that struck me as very hard indeed is this. He describes in the book that when his mother and sister were dying he was not allowed to see them. Surely, one can allow a long-time convict out with a warder to say good-bye to a sister or mother or wife. It does seem to me unnecessarily harsh not to do so. He also describes cases of flogging in prison. Apparently one is flogged with a cat-o'-nine-tails in all cases of assault on a warder. I can well understand that as the result of the nagging that goes on a prisoner's brain may suddenly snap, and he may get so out of hand that he darts out of the line and smashes the person who is nagging in the face. I can well understand that happening. In civilian life if one assaults a policeman—and it happens quite frequently—he does not receive the penalty of flogging but gets off with a fine of fifty shillings or so; but if you are a convict and assault a warder you get flogged for it. That seems to me unnecessary brutality, and I do not believe brutality does any good. It is not even a preventative. When a man loses his reason for a moment no amount of fear of flogging is going to stop him doing it again. Macartney quotes cases of men who have been flogged several times, but flogging has not deterred them from doing it again. All that it has done it to make them more like brute beasts.

He describes the punishment cell in which he was once or twice, when his diet was only 8 oz. of bread in the morning and 8 oz. of bread in the evening, with three pints of water per day. He was allowed from 11.30 to 1.45 to read an old magazine, and the rest of the time he was locked up in solitary confinement. I ask your Lordships, whether that is going to do anybody any good. If prisoners have been refractory is that kind of treatment going to reform them and make them a better type of prisoner? I do not think it is. It will have precisely the opposite effect. It will make them feel that they are enemies of society, and that they have a grudge against society, so that when they get free again they are likely to become worse than they were before; indeed I am certain that is so. I would like to make a suggestion. Smoking apparently is one of the great things that prisoners miss. After four years, if you are a convict, you get on to what is a special stage, and you are allowed to smoke at certain intervals. Tobacco apparently has become more valuable than gold in prison. According to this book, with tobacco you can buy practically everything. Instead of depriving people of smoking to start with, why not allow them to do it at first and take it away from them if they should turn out to be refractory prisoners? That seems to me a much more sensible way of doing things.

I want to turn for a moment to the question of mental defectives in prison. Personally I take the view that nearly all people who are convicts have a mental kink. I do not say they are mentally deficient, but that they have a mental kink. I think that at any rate 90 per cent, of them would be far better treated by psychologists than they are by means of prison treatment. I find that where people have been sent in for observation because their behaviour was somewhat peculiar they have been kept in the observation landing for years until they have been let out, and when let out they have been promptly discharged to the county asylum. It does seem to me utterly stupid, when quite clearly it must have been known over a number of years whether a person was mentally deficient, to keep him under sentence and then discharge him to a mental asylum. There is surely a great need for reform there.

With regard to visits, the prisoner, after two and a half years I think it is, is allowed a visit every two months, and after four years he is allowed a visit every month, but a great many questions are gone into if he asks anybody to visit him. Inquiries are made about the persons he has asked to visit him, whether they have a criminal record and so on. If they have a criminal record they are not allowed to visit the prisoner. The police are asked to find out the circumstances. In most cases the criminal is not a rich man living in a society which would not know much about the visits of police. These prisoners usually come from the working class, and all working-class homes distinctly dislike any policeman calling at the door even if the occupants of the houses themselves have no connection with criminals. It puts a black mark against them in the eyes of their neighbours, and it seems to me very hard that a number of convicts should not be allowed to see any of their friends for the simple reason that their friends are too frightened to have these inquiries made by the police. It places them in an awkward position, and they would rather keep away from seeing their friend who is confined to prison. It seems to me, again, that unnecessary inquiries are being made, and I do not know why they should be. The time of the prison visit in the case of an ordinary prisoner, I understand, is for about twenty minutes, and if the prisoner is in a convict prison it is half an hour. If you have to travel, say, from Sunderland to Parkhurst, that seems a very short time to allow. I think half an hour once every two months to see any one is too short a time.

Before I come to an end I am going to refer to another book, one about prisons in Russia. I know it is anathema to say anything about Russia to some noble Lords, but for all that I am going to refer to it. These restrictions seem to me unnecessary, and I do not see that they can do any good at all. Before that, however, I want to refer to the question of books. When you first enter a convict establishment you are allowed two novels and two miscellaneous books a fortnight. After you have been there some time, say four years, you are allowed as many books as you want, in the discretion of the chaplain. There seems to be no encouragement at all for convicts to read any particular type of book; indeed they seem to be discouraged from reading books. Macartney in his book describes how he had to fight the authorities to get books, though he did not want books to which anybody could possibly object. Why there should be this official idea of keeping books from convicts I cannot understand. I should have thought that the one thing that might do some good to a convict in prison would be to allow him to read good books. Such books would probably improve prisoners' minds and show them how to be decent citizens when they are eventually let out. I cannot understand the idea of keeping books away from them. It does not seem to me a sensible thing to do.

As I have taken up quite enough of your Lordships' time I will only refer to one other point before I sit down and that is the question of money. Apparently a convict is allowed to be sent one pound for special purposes such as false teeth, spectacles, or something of that description, but if a pound note is sent to a convict and the person who sends it does not enclose his name and address the money is; sequestrated. Why should the convict be deprived of that pound because some friend who wishes to remain anonymous has not disclosed his name and address to the authorities? It seems to me that that is grossly imposing on the convict and also on the person who sends the pound. It does not seem right, and I cannot see any reason for it. Before I sit down I just want to contrast what is said by a gentleman who went to Russia with what is the case here. He wrote a book called "A Physician's Tour in Soviet Russia." This shows how different in many respects is the treatment of convicts in Russia to that accorded in this country. Let me quote what is said: The prison, or correctional Colony, of Levortovski, was formerly a military prison with 205 cells for solitary confinement. The cells are arranged in four long galleries, each of three stories, radiating from a centre. It now houses 615 prisoners, three in a cell. This particular ' Colony has been running for two years … Each cell is fitted with a radio loudspeaker above its door. The beds are clean and comfortable. The barred windows are large. The doors of the cells are left wide open, except between one a.m. and six a.m., so that prisoners can visit each other freely. One cell, which we passed, had been padlocked on the outside by the prisoner himself. Presently he turned up, opened the padlock, and welcomed us to his cell. He was a stout elderly gentleman, who informed us that he had been sentenced to ten years confinement for embezzlement of 71,000 roubles from a sugar trust. He is leaving to-day in high spirits, having, by his industry and good conduct, served exactly six years, ten months and seven days. He told us that he has secured a secretarial post in the office of the Commissary of Trade at a salary of 700 roubles a month, and will take up his new duties forthwith. Meals are served to the prisoners in their cells, but a comfortable communal dining room will presently be built. Each prisoner is expected to work eight hours a day, knocking off for a meal. There are two separate shifts of workers. If he is illiterate, this defect must be 'liquidated,' and he must learn to read and write, being instructed by fellow prisoners who were teachers in civil life. Non-illiterate prisoners are employed in one or other of the various prison factories, chiefly in spinning, weaving, tailoring, and embroidering. For this work the pay is from 30 to 35 roubles a month. This amount is placed to each man's account, to be handed to him on leaving. He is allowed to spend a certain proportion on clothes, tobacco, &c., but not on alcohol. He has a week's holiday in his own home after one year; this is increased to a fortnight in subsequent years, and if he is a peasant he may be allowed to stay at home for three months to help in getting in the harvest. His friends and family can come and visit him in prison every ten days during the first year and every five days in subsequent years … Each work-day performed by the prisoner cuts more than a day off his sentence, two days' work corresponding to three days' remission of prison. I will not read any more, for the quotation is a long one, but it illustrates my point. In Russia they are really trying to reform convicts. It is not just a question of society taking revenge upon them. I have nothing more to say except to express the hope that we shall hear that some measures of reform in this country are contemplated. I beg to move.

THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA

My Lords, I confess that I am in some difficulty in answering the noble Earl. His credulity as far as remarks made by members of his own Party are concerned is so great, that I feel that his disbelief in any remarks made by me is certain to be very much greater. In my short experience in your Lordships' House I have never heard a speech containing so many allegations based on one book by one convict without any attempt whatever to produce evidence from outside sources. I cannot possibly—indeed I think it would be waste of time if I tried—go in very great detail into the allegations which Mr. Macartney made and which have been repeated in your Lordships' House. I will take two obvious misstatements which occur in the book. Nagging by warders has been referred to, and I suppose the passage to which the noble Earl referred is this: Saturday afternoon exercise was hell in 1928. Assaults on jailers were the feature of the exercising ring. Convicts exasperated beyond control would step out of the circulating ring and assault the jailers. It may interest your Lordships to know that assaults on the officers of Parkhurst in 1928, 1929 and 1930 were two, three and nine respectively. Then we heard something about the long hours that prisoners spend alone in their cells during the week-end. I have here a list of hours which I shall be glad to furnish to the noble Earl. It shows that the ordinary prisoner is out of his cell for at least nine hours over the week-end and many men are out for very much longer periods. I will take upon myself the responsibility of telling the noble Earl that the story of hearing the drop fall is pure nonsense and complete imagination. It is not possible to hear the drop fall at Wandsworth.

In view of the fact that the noble Earl's speech was really based on what he himself must admit is an ex parte statement, I think the best thing I can do is to give your Lordships a short review of what has actually been done in the way of prison reform during the last few years. I will preface my remarks by quoting from the Commissioners' Annual Report of 1922–3, which seems to me to show what should be the object of prison reform. They say: It is not to make prisons pleasant, but to construct a system, of training such as will fro the prisoner to re-enter the world as a citizen. To this end the first requisite is greater activity of mind and body, and the creation of habits of sustained industry. Longer hours of work are therefore the first item in our programme. Next comes the removal of any features of unnecessary degradation in prison life and the promotion of self-respect, and education on particular lines calculated to rouse some intelligent interest, and to raise the mind out of a sordid circle of selfish broodings. Finally, we endeavour to awaken some sense of personal responsibility by the gradual and cautious introduction of methods of limited trust. Those were the ideals of prison reform in 1922, and I believe that the results have proved that those ideals, even though they have not been completely satisfied, are directed rightly. In 1910 the prison population of this country was just under 21,000. At the present moment it is only 10,000. Of all the persons recently received into prison for the first time for serious offences during the years 1930–33, 80.7 per cent, so far as is known had not returned to prison a second time up to the end of 1935. Therefore it does seem that we have made reforms—even if the noble Earl thinks we have not gone far enough—in the right direction of keeping people out of prison and preventing people who have been in prison from being forced back into criminal life.

What are the reforms which we have been successful in introducing during the last twenty years? In the first place the principle of solitary confinement, which was in former days the great principle of the penal system of England, has been practically done away with. For both convicts and prisoners serving hard labour separate confinement was finally abolished in 1931. Every prisoner now, unless there is some medical reason, works from the very beginning of his sentence in association with other prisoners. It is quite obvious, however, that association with other prisoners has dangers within itself. Contamination may only too easily follow if all sorts of prisoners are allowed to mix freely together. Therefore the object of our reforms has always been to classify prisoners as clearly and definitely as is within our power. The first and obvious classification has been the institution of Borstal, which has at one stroke taken one-sixth of the prison population and put them into places where they cannot be contaminated by older and more vicious criminals. Apart from Borstal it is obviously very difficult to have a system of classification within the prison itself. It is very difficult to have one set of prisoners having one sort of treatment and another set having another sort of treatment. It is quite clear that if you are trying to create some sense of responsibility in them and to give them training your efforts will be hampered if you have different classes; of prisoners in the same prison. Therefore it has been the policy of the Commissioners to reserve certain establishments for certain particular classes of prisoners.

Wormwood Scrubs since 1925 has been reserved for prisoners serving a first term in the Metropolitan area; Wakefield has been reserved for selected prisoners in the Midlands since 1923; and Chelmsford-the latest, I think—has been reserved since 1931 for younger prisoners of criminal habits. Furthermore, the Commissioners have developed the policy—and the very right policy, it seems to me—of collecting as far as possible -those young prisoners between sixteen and twenty-one who are serving very short sentences. At first only people who were serving more than three months were collected, but now I am happy to say that those who are serving as short a sentence as one month go to these collecting centres. But I should like to emphasise—and I am very glad, on behalf of the Government, to have the opportunity of doing so—that, however hard you try, you cannot in these collecting centres give the same training as you can give in a Borstal institution.

The Prison Commissioners have frequently drawn attention to the fact that magistrates and those who have to administer the law should think twice, think thrice and then think again before they send young people to prison, particularly those who have not previously been guilty of offences. Thirty-eight per cent, of the boys who were sentenced to imprisonment in 1935 had not previously been convicted of an offence, and it is the firm conviction of the Commissioners and of His Majesty's Government that in many of those cases probation would have met the case far better, and that in the remainder of the cases a longer term of Borstal imprisonment would have done the boy far more good. The only consolation that one has is that whereas in 1932 a total of 2,653 boys received sentences of imprisonment, the number had fallen to 1,608 in 1935.

I have already dealt with Macartney's allegations about the length of time that prisoners were kept in their cells over the week-end, but I should like to emphasise that it is the firm policy of the Commissioners at the moment to reduce to a minimum the period during which the prisoners are locked in their cells. They do that for the very obvious reason that if you want to fit a man to go out and take his part in life again, it is important to approximate as far as possible the conditions of prison to the conditions of human association. Of course all this depends on money, and I am happy to say that since 1934 it has been possible very greatly to increase the staff of prison officers available to look after the prisoners. I have not the exact figures with me, but I should say that with a reduced prison population the staff has increased by one-fifth. This increase has, of course, had the double advantage of enabling things like hair-cutting, washing and suchlike to be done in the evening hours instead of interrupting the work in the shops.

I propose to deal very briefly with the remaining reforms which have been accomplished during the last two years. We have started an experimental system of wages in Wakefield, and that has been extended all over the Borstal institutions since 1929. Evening classes, with the object of improving the mind, have been steadily increased and, not least, the prison library system has been vastly improved. I can assure my noble friend that the insinuations which he drew from the book which he was quoting were not accurate, and I should have thought that it was quite obvious that they were not accurate, in so far as on one page you find Mr. Macartney complaining that no books of a political character were allowed to him, and on the next you find that in fact books on Lenin and on Marx were in his habitual possession, as apparently the Prison Governor allowed him access to them. It seems a little unfair that he should take the fullest advantage of all the political literature he could get and at the same time complain that no political literature is allowed. The prison libraries are being steadily increased and a new system of cataloguing has been introduced which enables a prisoner to say exactly and with the greatest ease what book he requires. It is quite untrue, as I think was suggested in at any rate one book on prisons, that the prisoner is handed a book on a plate and told that he can read that or not read anything at all. That is not the principle which is animating the Commissioners at this time.

The only other item of prison reform to which I should like to draw your attention is the weekly news bulletin which is now being produced and which I believe is doing an immense amount of good. Not merely does it give the prisoner something to talk about and something to think about, but it ensures that when he comes out, having read those bulletins, he is not suddenly handicapped all through the first year after he has come out by people referring to events which he never knew had taken place.

I think I have said enough to show that the spirit of prison reform is very much alive at the present moment. The Commissioners are doing everything in their power to fit these people for the new life they will have to take up when they come out. But no one is more aware than they or the Government that all these reforms are quite valueless unless they are accompanied by a very careful selection of the staff who are going to implement them. The Commissioners are fully alive to the importance of the selection of warders, and they are very fortunate in so far as the conditions of service are sufficiently good to give them a very wide choice indeed of the type of man they select. The candidate after an interview has a nine weeks' course of intensive training in all his duties. He then, I think, has another interview. At the end of that between 25 and 30 per cent, of these men who have had the course are rejected and not admitted to the service.

I think that gives the noble Lord some idea of the strictness with which warders are selected, and I think that much of that nagging of which he complained, which I can well understand, if it did take place, might lead to very unfortunate results, is a memory of the past. That no longer exists, and the present type of warder is quite different from the type upon which Mr. Macartney drew for his imaginary pictures. He will not forget that, despite all those strictures on warders in general all through that book, whenever Mr. Macartney mentions a warder by name he says, "He was not a bad sort"; "he was a good chap." Therefore it was more the general conception of the warder rather than the individual of which the noble Earl, I think, was speaking and of which Mr. Macartney wrote. I have made a long speech, I am afraid, and I have tried to give some sort of account of what the Commissioners have done during the last two years. But I should not like the noble Earl to think that on that account, because reforms have been made, we are complacent or the Commissioners are complacent. We are fully aware and they are fully aware that there is still much that can be done, and, if I may say so, I am very glad that the noble Earl has raised this matter before your Lordships' House, because it is one which should be continually before the consciousness of the public and of your Lordships.

THE EARL OF KINNOULL

My Lords, in thanking the noble Marquess for his reply I am very pleased indeed that some of these allegations of Macartney's have now been denied, because they have never been officially denied before. I was, if I may say so, very gratified indeed to hear from the speech of the noble Marquess that these reforms are taking place and that more reforms are in contemplation. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.