Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/776

Rh 752 P K I S O N DISCIPLINE among the adults were selected to undergo the experimental disci pline of solitude and separation at Pentonville ; less hopeful cases went to the hulks ; and all adults alike passed on to the antipodes. Fresh stages awaited the convict on his arrival at A an Piemen s Land. The first was limited to &quot;lifers&quot; and colonial convicts sen tenced a second time. It consisted in detention at one of the penal stations, either Norfolk Island or Tasman s Peninsula, where the disgraceful conditions already described continued unchanged to the very last. The second stage received the largest number, who were subjected in it to gang labour, working under restraint in various parts of the colony^ These probation stations, as they were called, were intended to inculcate habits of industry and subordination ; they were provided with supervisors and religious instructors ; and, had they not been soon tainted by the vicious virus brought to them by others arriving from the penal stations, they might have answered their purpose for a time. But they became as bad as the woj-st of the penal settlements, and contributed greatly to the deplorable breakdown of the whole system. The third stage, and the first step towards freedom, was the concession of a pass which permitted the convict to be at large under certain conditions to seek work for himself ; the fourth was a ticket-of-leave, the possession of which allowed him to come and go much as he pleased ; the fifth, and last, was absolute panlon, with the prospects of rehabilitation. This scheme seemed admirable on p;ipcr ; yet it failed completely when put into practice. Colonial resources were quite unable to bear the pressure. Within two or three years Van Diemen s Land was fairly inundated with convicts. Sixteen thousand were sent out in four years ; the average annual draft in the colony was about thirtv thousand, and this when there were only thirty-seven thousand free settlers. Half the whole number of convicts remained in Government hands, and were kept in the probation gangs, engaged upon public works of great utility ; but the other half, pass-holders and ticket-of-leave men in a state of semi-freedom, could get little or no employment. The supply greatly exceeded the demand ; there were no hirers of labour. Had the colony been as large and as prosperous as its neighbour it could scarcely have absorbed the mass of workmen ; but it was really on the verge of bankruptcy its finances were embarrassed, its trades and industries at a standstill. But not only were the convicts idle ; they were utterly depraved. It was soon found that the system which kept large bodies always together had a most pernicious effect upon their moral condition. &quot; The congregation of criminals in large batches without aderpuate supervision meant simply wholesale widespread pollution,&quot; as was said at the time. These ever-present and con stantly increasing evils forced the Government to reconsider its position ; and in 1846 transportation to Van Diemen s Land was temporarily suspended for a couple of years, during which it was hoped some relief might be afforded. The formation of a new con vict colony, in North Australia had been contemplated ; but the project, warmly espoused by Mr Gladstone, then under secretary of state for the colonies, was presently abandoned ; and it now became clear that no resumption of transportation was possible. Some fresh scheme had to be devised, and that with out delay. The task fell upon Sir George Grey as home secretary, who, in dealing with it laid the foundations of the present British penal system. This system was to consist (1) of a limited period of separate confinement in a home prison or penitentiary, accompanied by industrial employment and moral training; (2) of hard labour at some public works prison either at home or abroad ; and (3) of exile to a colony with a conditional pardon or ticket- of-leave. No pains were spared to give effect to this plan as goon as it was decided upon. Pentonville was available for the first phase; Millbank was also pressed into the service, and accommodation was hired in some of the best provincial prisons, as at Wakefield, Leicester, and else where. Few facilities existed for carrying out the second stage, but they were speedily improvised. Although the hulks at home had been condemned, convict establish ments in which these floating prisons still formed the principal part were organized at Bermuda and Gibraltar. Neither of these, it may be stated at once, was a con spicuous success ; they were too remote for effective super vision ; and, although they lingered on for some years, they were finally condemned. The chief efforts of the authorities were directed to the formation of public works prisons at home, and here the most satisfactory results were soon obtained. The construction of a harbour of refuge at Portland had been recommended in 1845 ; in 1847 an Act was passed to facilitate the purchase of land there, and a sum of money taken up in the estimates for the erection of a prison, which was commenced next year. At another point Dartmoor, a prison already, stood avail able, although it had not been occupied since the last war, when ten thousand French and American prisoners had been incarcerated in it. A little reconstruction made Dartmoor into a modern jail, and in the waste lands around there was ample labour for any number of convict hands. Dartmoor was opened in 1850; two years later a convict prison was established at Portsmouth in con nexion with the dockyard, and another of the same class at Chatham in 1856. The works undertaken at these various stations were of national importance, and the results obtained extremely valuable, as will presently be shown. The usefulness of these public works prisons and the need for their development soon. became apparent. Although the authorities still clung to the principle of transportation, that punishment grew more and more difficult to inflict. The third stage in Sir George Grey s scheme contemplated the enforced emigration of released convicts, whom the discipline of separation and public works was supposed to have purged and purified, and who would have better hopes of entering on a new career of honest industry in a new country than when thrown back among vicious associations at home. The theory was good, the practice difficult. No colony would accept these ticket-of-leave men as a gift. Van Diemen s Land, hither to submissive, rebelled, and positively refused to receive them, even though this denial cut off the supply of labour, now urgently needed. Other colonies were no less resolute in their opposition. The appearance of a convict ship at the Cape of Good Hope nearly produced a revolt. Athough Earl Grey addressed a circular to all colonial Governments, offering them the questionable boon of trans portation, only one, the comparatively new colony of Western Australia, responded in the affirmative. But this single receptacle could not absorb a tithe of the whole number of convicts awaiting exile. It became necessary therefore to find some other means for the disposal of those so rapidly accumulating at home. Accordingly, in 1853 the first Penal Servitude Act was passed, substitut ing certain shorter sentences of penal servitude for trans portation. It was only just to abbreviate the terms ; under the old sentence the transportee knew that if well conducted he would spend the greater part of it in the comparative freedom of exile. But, although sentences were shortened, it was not thought safe to surrender all control over the released convict ; and he was only granted a ticket-of-leave for the unexpired portion of his original sentence. But no effective supervision was maintained over these convicts at large. They speedily relapsed into crime ; their mimbers, as the years passed, became so great, and their depredations so serious, especially in garotte robberies, that a cry of indignation, led by general alarm, was raised against the system which exposed society to such dangers. There was a vague desire to return to transportation to rid the country once more, by removal to far-off points, of the criminals who preyed upon it. The usual panacea for all public grievances was presently tried, and the system with which Sir Joshua Jebb s name had come to be identified was arraigned before a select com mittee of the House of Commons in 1863. Before reviewing the report of this committee, it will be well to retrace our steps and examine the phases through which prison discipline had passed since 1836. We left this, which embraces the preliminary stages of secondary punishment, at a date when public attention was very generally drawn to it. The true object of penal treatment had begun to be understood, and keen controversy had arisen as to the best methods for securing it. This