Page:Report of the Commission Appointed to inquire into the Penal System of the Colony.pdf/12

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To His Excellency Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Gerard Smith, Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and over the Colony of Western Australia and its Dependencies, etc., etc., etc.

Sir,—

We, the Commissioners, appointed by Commission, dated the seventh day of September, 1898, to enquire into the existing conditions of the Penal System of Western Australia, and to report upon the method now in use for the punishment of criminals, their classification, the remission of sentences, and the sanitary condition of Fremantle Gaol, as well as to enquire into all contracts for supplies of food and other materials for use in the said Gaol, have the honor to respectfully submit our Third and Final Report as follows:—

In our First Progress Report we dealt generally with those matters which, in our opinion, appeared to be then most urgently in need of the attention of the Executive.

In our Second Progress Report, dated March 6th, 1899, we devoted our attention chiefly to the cases of individual prisoners.

We now propose to deal generally and finally with the whole of the subjects entrusted to us for Report.

Your Commissioners, whilst carefully inquiring into the present condition of the Western Australian Penal System, have kept in view the necessity of adopting whatever experience may have been shown elsewhere to be the best system of prison treatment in the interests, both of society and of the criminal. To this end, and having regard to the special circumstances and requirements of Western Australia, we have carefully consulted the best authorities on criminology, such as Professor Ferri, Lombroso. Du Cane, Tallack, Maudsley, Ellis, Mayhew, and others. We have further had the advantage of a large amount of local evidence with reference to the treatment of our criminal population.

In the result your Commissioners do not advocate the adoption in its entirety of the penal system of any one country, but rather suggest the adoption of what appear to be the best points of all the systems which they have studied, having regard primarily to their adaptation to the special conditions of our own colony. In this way we hope that the number of prisoners will be greatly reduced, and society be benefited both morally and economically.

CRIMINAL STATISTICS.

The following table, taken from the latest edition of Coghlan's "Seven Colonies of Australasia," shows the number of persons per thousand charged in each colony before the Magistrates:—

If the charges above referred to are classified for each Colony the result is as follows:—

Out of 1,410 male prisoners committed in Western Australia in 1897 only 104 were born here. Of the rest 589 were born in Great Britain, although they had mostly been domiciled in the Australian Colonies for some years, and 717 were foreigners, or born in other Colonies.

The figures quoted above with reference to charges lead us to believe that the amount of crime, in proportion to the population in Australia, is very much greater than that in Europe, although a perfect comparison is not possible because of the different character of criminal legislation in different countries, and the variations in the rigour with which that legislation is enforced.. So far as the number of convictions are concerned, they are higher per thousand of the population than in Europe. This, we think, may be partially explained by the fact that the standing armies of Europe employ and put through a course of discipline a class who would otherwise be likely to swell the number of unemployed and vagrant persons.

Your Commissioners are of opinion that the excess of crine may also in part be due to the lack of religious training in the State Schools, and to the fact that this deficiency is in too large a number of cases not compensated by religious or moral training at home.

As regards Western Australia the statistics further clearly indicate that the somewhat appalling amount of crime here existent is due to the large immigration of undesirable individuals from the Eastern