§ Mr. JOWETTasked the Home Secretary if he will state the names of the persons responsible for authorising the punishments at present inflicted upon prisoners who are charged with offences against discipline in English penal servitude prisons; and whether the judges of the King's Bench Division or the recorders of Quarter Sessions have had the nature of such punishments communicated to them?
§ Mr. BRACEFull details of the punishments which may be imposed in convict prisons will be found in the Statutory Rules for Convict Prisons. Minor offences are dealt with by the governors, more serious offences by the directors of convict prisons, and the boards of visitors. Judges and recorders are supplied by the Home Office with information as to the carrying out of sentences, and are given every facility for visiting convict prisons and studying the convict prison system.
§ Mr. JOWETTasked the Home Secretary if he will state the last occasion on which the persons responsible for authorising the character of the punishment at present inflicted upon refractory prisoners in English penal servitude prisons reviewed those punishments; and whether he will consent to the appointment of a Commission of independent persons to investigate the punishments at present authorised to be inflicted by way of disciplinary punishment on such prisoners?
§ Mr. BRACEThe existing Statutory Rules were made in 1899, after the Prison Act of 1898 had been fully discussed and passed by Parliament. The rules, as required by the Act, were submitted to Parliament in draft before they were made. Nothing has occurred since then to show that any fresh inquiry is needed.
§ Mr. JOWETTasked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that the following punishments were inflicted upon prisoners at Dartmoor Convict Prison, up till February, 1917, who were guilty of alleged offences against prison discipline: placing a prisoner in irons continually for a period of six months; compelling a prisoner to wear what is known as a button suit, which is constructed in such a manner as to be a continual torture to the person wearing it; whether prisoners were ironed with what are called body-belt irons and irons that clamp the legs,- at the same time ironing the hands behind the back; 2743W whether he is aware that conscientious objectors now detained at Dartmoor have inspected these instruments, and whether he will give an undertaking that punishments of this kind shall be stopped in English penal servitude prisons?
§ Mr. BRACEThe "irons" used are light leg-chains, which are worn by prisoners who have been guilty of violence in prison or who have attempted to escape, and the so-called "button suits" are trousers supplied for the convenience of those who have to wear the chains. They cause no pain and there has never been any complaint about them. The body belt is used on rare occasions for dangerous convicts who threaten violence; it does not permit of the hands being clamped behind the back. There are I certain obsolete chains of merely antiquarian interest in the chain-room at J Dartmoor, and the conscientious objectors j may have seen these. Chains are never used by way of punishment, but only in I cases where a convict could not be allowed to work or exercise in association without some such safeguard.
§ Mr. JOWETTasked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that in English convict prisons a prisoner sentenced to penal servitude who is suspected of malingering or of pretending to be insane is placed in a naked condition in a box like a sentry-box, which has a water-tank with perforated holes in it as a roof; whether hot or cold water is poured on the prisoner for a period varying from five to fifteen minutes until he is in a state of collapse; and under what powers are the governor and medical officer of a prison authorised to carry out an English equivalent to the Chinese water torture, which was abolished in Chinese prisons on the establishment of the Chinese Republic?
§ Mr. BRACENo such instrument as is described exists in any English prison. Probably the hon. Member has heard of the old shower bath in Dartmoor Prison, which seems to have attracted the attention of the conscientious objectors who are lodged there. It stands in the hospital and is similar to the shower baths which were2744W at one time not uncommon in private houses. It has been disused for many years.
§ Mr. JOWETTasked the Home Secretary whether he will state the number of times the punishment of the straight-jacket has been inflicted upon prisoners guilty of alleged offences against prison discipline in English penal servitude prisons in the last twelve months; and whether he will give an undertaking that this apparatus shall only be constructed in such a way as to restrain prisoners who are suspected of intending violence to themselves in contradistinction to its present use of torturing prisoners as well as restraining them?
§ Mr. BRACEThe restraint jacket is never used as a punishment, but only on the recommendation of the medical officer when necessary on medical grounds. It never has been or will be used for the purpose of torturing prisoners.
§ Mr. JOWETTasked the Home Secretary whether he will lay upon the Table of the House the instructions given to prison medical officers in relation to the practice of forcible feeding; and whether he will give an undertaking that the ore-sent practice by which prison medical officers are authorised in certain cases to administer food in such a way that the administration will be a punishment of a deterrent nature to the person being forcibly fed shall be suspended until an independent inquiry is held into the medical administration in His Majesty's penal servitude and local prisons?
§ Mr. BRACEThe only instruction is to the effect that in the event of a prisoner persistently refusing food, the medical officer must consider the advisability of compulsory feeding at an early date, before starvation causes weakness of a serious character. No such instructions as is suggested in the question are ever given. Forcible feeding is never resorted to in prison as a moans of punishment, but only when it is necessary to preserve life or health. It is administered in such a way as to cause as little pain or discomfort as possible.