§ LORD CALVERLEYhad given Notice to ask His Majesty's Government whether it is possible to state their policy with regard to young people sentenced to be kept in Borstal Institutions; the number of persons at present in Borstal Institutions; the number of young people under the age of twenty-one in His Majesty's local prisons; if possible to report on the work of the Yelverton Borstal Institution and its future prospects. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I will not detain your Lordships for any length of time on the question which I am raising, which chiefly relates to prisons in which youths and girls are incarcerated. If I can I desire to get from His Majesty's Government some specific statement with regard to this matter. The Prison Commissioners have not made any report for last year, nor indeed since 1939. So far as our prison population is concerned, some of us are somewhat apprehensive as to the present position. I believe that in 1938 and 1939 there were about 10,000 people who were convicted and sent to prison. I should say that to-day the number approaches 17,000, which is a very great increase.
In one prison, in which I am specifically interested, at the time of the last meeting two or three weeks ago of the visiting Justices, the prison population was 685. This was a prison which was meant to accommodate 450. Most of the inmates of that prison are under the age of twenty-five. On Monday, when I paid my usual visit, I found that the number had gone down to the somewhat more satisfactory total of 625. But there is a case where there is great overcrowding.
263 When one realises that, in that prison, the average number of youths per month was one hundred, and that actually in one month there were 122 youths awaiting Borstal treatment, the number is both disturbing and somewhat shocking, because, if there is one place to which one should not send youths under the age of twenty-one, it is to a local or "old lags'" prison. I think that what obtains in a place like Leeds also obtains in respect of other prisons. With regard to Parkhurst, I understand that the figures, a fortnight ago, showed that there were actually 700 convicts at that prison. If efficient, remedial and positive treatment is desired for these unfortunate people, the prison population, per prison, has to be reduced, because it is beyond the power of even the finest of Governors to cope with it. It also imposes a terrific strain upon prison officials when they have to administer, with depleted staffs, a population which is fifty to sixty per cent. above the normal.
Let me again consider this local prison, to which I made reference. On Monday in this particular local prison I found sixty-seven long-service convicts in a prison where exercise can only be taken on two or three restricted rings, as they are called. There is merely a small asphalt plot, about twenty yards long by twenty yards wide for P.T. drill for the younger prisoners. That is quite wrong. The Prison Commissioners, at the earliest opportunity, should see to it that, not only should these youths be removed from the "old lags'" prison, but that there should not be a single convict in a local prison except those who are waiting to go, let us say, to Parkhurst or to some other place.
I stress that point but at the same time I realize the difficulties of the Prison Commissioners in facing up to their many problems. There is a waiting list of 700, I believe, for Borstal Institutions, and now Judges and Recorders are chary of committing youths to Borstal because they know they may have to wait an indefinite period of time in a local prison and their characters may deteriorate. We have no room in the nine Borstals we possess. For the last year for which I have figures—that is, to December, 1944; there has been 264 no report since—I find that there were 3,021 youths in our Borstal prisons and 700 were waiting to go in. I agree that that was a drop of 200. There were 904 girls, an increase in one year of 50 per cent. in the number of girls under the age of 23 who were being convicted and committed to Borstal institutions.
Now that position has been, I agree, alleviated. I believe the Home Secretary is going to try to secure seven additional Borstals. Instead of one Borstal for females there will be three. I wish to compliment the Home Secretary on his courage in opening Yelverton as a Borstal Institution. That is known as Dartmoor. I know I shall be criticized for saying that. There is nothing wrong with Yelverton and Princetown; there are decent people living there. I agree that the only thing that is wrong is the terrible buildings, which ought to be bombed, blasted or, as one distinguished gentleman has said, dynamited. Through the courage of the Home Secretary, however, in sending a good governor there, appointing four housemasters and having a matron—a condition of affairs which obtains in the most efficient public schools—they were able to take 300 or 400 youths under the age of 23 from our prisons and send them for better treatment where there were 2,000 acres of agricultural land for them to work upon. I commend the Home Secretary for his courage. That arrangement, however, may be only a temporary expedient.
I have visited one or two of these Borstals. There are members in this House with great and honourable records for their contribution in efforts to solve this problem. I believe it was a man named Bill Llewellyn who marched his boys from Feltham to Lowdham in order to start the Borstal Institution there. In another place a question was put to the Home Secretary about the escapes from Dartmoor. He said that twenty-five had escaped. Well, fifty-four have escaped from Lowdham in a year. If it is an open Borstal and a boy has the spirit of adventure in him and has the chance to escape, sometimes he does it. But there are worse crimes than trying to escape from Borstal.
I apologize for detaining the House too long. I wish to ask for a statement as to when we shall have an increase in 265 Borstal institutions, so that no youths shall be kept in an old lags' prison. I am told that sixty per cent. make good in our Borstal institutions; twenty-five per cent. fail, and then make good on the second offence, and fifteen per cent. are wasted. I should like the Prison Commissioners not to be too easy in revoking sentences. We find that some of these boys come up to the Assizes under the age of twenty-three and are actually sent back to Borstal to complete their sentences. The other day I saw hairy, brawny fellows, six feet or more in height, clad in knickers. Again, I want to draw the attention of the Home Office to the foolish method of putting these huge men in knickers when we have a good supply of battle dress into which we might put them.
The policy should be not to send any young man over the age of 21 to a Borstal institution. We should have other means of dealing with this class of criminal. Also we shall have to find a greater variety of occupations for them. In an old lags' prison the men have to sew mail bags and mattresses, and similar things, or do a little bit of weaving. A member of the other House went into one of our prisons some years ago and found an old friend of his, an old member of the House of Commons, there. He was stitching away at the mail bags. The member of the other House said: "Hallo, Horatio, sewing?" "No," replied the other, "I'm reaping" We ought to have a greater variety of occupation in our prisons for these people.
I agree that the yardsticks of our moral values have been reduced in the past years. I wish there were time for us to have a debate on the sanctity of home life, and what a mother can do to keep her boy or her girl out of prison. We shall have to come to such questions, in my opinion, later on. I agree that none of us is without sin. I remember that, when I was connected with the Kitchen Committee of another place at the time of the Coronation, we entertained Members of Parliament and their families, and at the end of the day, when we finished and counted the spoons, there were 67 missing. They had the coat of arms of the House of Commons on them. Therefore we are all prone to sin, and I am not going to sit in judgment upon my fellowmen or even upon the younger generation. I really do not apologize for 266 bringing this question to the attention of the House. I feel it needs spot-lighting, and I feel obliged that my noble and learned friend, the Lord Chancellor, will make a reply.
§ 6.8 p.m.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD JOWITT)My Lords, my noble friend has strayed rather from the strait and narrow path which he set himself in his question, and I cannot follow him because I am not prepared to go into some of the interesting topics which he raised—men in knickers; Horatio, who, so far as I know, never went to Borstal (he might have been very much better if he had done), and the remission of sentences, with regard to which I find myself in some measure of agreement with my noble friend. The necessity to-day is very apparent for a Judge not only to have regard to the interests of the prisoner, the wrong-doer, but also, in so doing, not to forget the interests of the person who has been wronged. Both factors must be borne in mind. However, those topics are not raised by his question. I have come to deal with his question only, and with that question I will now proceed to deal.
The policy of His Majesty's Government is that young persons who have been sentenced to Borstal should be sent to institutions where they will receive their training as soon as possible after they have been sentenced. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department has been, as noble Lords will be aware from the statements which he has made in another place, very much concerned about the detention in prison for unduly long periods of persons who have been sentenced to Borstal detention and who have had to wait for vacancies to arise. This is an evil, but it is an evil which the authorities have been taking the most active steps within their power to remedy. The shortage of Borstal accommodation results from two factors; first, the reduction in the accommodation available to the Prison Commissioners during the war, both as a result of war damage and of diversion to other purposes, and secondly, the rise in committals to Borstal detention over the last few years, which has not only been maintained but is still showing an upward trend. There was a 20 per cent. increase in 1945 as compared with the year before the war, 1938. 267 There are, therefore, more persons coming in and less accommodation. The only remedy is the provision of more institutions and this is not at all an easy matter, because buildings which are suitable for and which can be adapted to use as Borstal Institutions are difficult to find, and when they are found their adaptation takes some time. It also takes time, particularly in view of the depletion of prison staffs through war service, to provide and train the necessary staff to run these institutions.
The noble Lord stated, and I thoroughly agree with him, that unless you get the right sort of people to run these institutions, the whole thing is a complete failure. We have tackled the problem as a matter of urgency, and if the noble Lord will look up the debate he will find that on the 28th of March of this year the Home Secretary made a full statement in another place of the progress which had been made in the acquisition and staffing of new premises and of the arrangements which were in hand for acquiring further premises. He explained in that statement that the arrangements made or in train will provide for a population of over 3,300 youths, excluding the use of Dartmoor, which will cease to become a Borstal Institution when other premises are available. Since that statement was made, the new Borstal Reception Centre at Latchmere House, which will accommodate 150 boys, has come into use and is providing much needed relief for the purpose of classifying and allocating youths to the appropriate institutions. That part of the institution at Feltham which was formerly used as a Borstal institution has now again been made available for Borstal training and will take up to 300 youths. Of the three country houses for boys mentioned in the statement, one has now been acquired, subject to contract, and the negotiations for the other two are approaching completion.
Then I was asked about the numbers. The number of persons at present in Borstal institutions is as follows. At the end of April, 1946, the number of persons under sentence of Borstal detention was 3,391, of whom 2,358 were in Borstal institutions. So there were over 1,000 268 who were not. The noble Lord also asked for the number of young people under the age of 21 in prisons. At the end of April, 1946, the number of young people under 21, other than those sentenced to Borstal detention, who were in prisons was 1,209. I have not prepared myself with figures as to the general prison population because that was not asked in the question, but the noble Lord did refer to it. I think I am right in saying that the total prison population today is of the order of 16,000 people and before the war it was somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000. Finally, I was asked to say something about what the noble Lord called the Yelverton Institution, which is more commonly known as Dartmoor. I think that is getting into its stride and it has now nearly 200 boys. We are paying particular attention to vocational training, as in woodwork and metal work. The local education authority has played up well and has interested itself in the provision of educational classes. Considering that the institution has only been going for some six months I think we are making steady and satisfactory progress. As I have said, we do not intend to keep Dartmoor permanently for this purpose, but for the present, and certainly the near future, we shall simply not be able to do without it if we are to house the number of boys for whom we have to cater.
I think that is an answer to the noble Lord's question. I do not pretend it is an altogether satisfactory answer, but I think it is a complete one. It will perhaps satisfy him to know that the Government are just as much alive to the difficulties and to the evils of the situation as the noble Lord himself.