Page:Report of the Commission Appointed to inquire into the Penal System of the Colony.pdf/15

13 of each prisoner in the hands of an individual who would he subject to constant pressure by theprisoner's friends.

The intellectual training of the Elmira prisoners includes classes for primary instruction and courses of lectures on literature, art, etc. There are also debating societies to which the public are admitted. Practically, except in the matter of the personnel and the discipline of the students, there is little difference between Elmira and an ordinary college. To us it appears to be a fatal objection to the Elmira system that criminals, merely because they are criminals should, at the public cost, be surrounded by conditions of life and culture infinitely superior to those enjoyed by honest men of the same rank in life. And there is the further objection that the whole process and the duration of the Elmira mode of treatment depends upon the judgment of one individual, the Superintendent, who is unlikely to possess all the qualifications of a Board of Medical Jurists, such as would be necessary properly to deal with so delicate and complicated a matter.

A weak spot in the Elmira system is the not unnatural tendency of all prison authorities, in spite of constant practical proof to the contrary, to regard those prisoners as being the best and most hopeful characters who give least trouble to the authorities during their incarceration. It is, however, perfectly notorious that the most virile, the most capable and intelligent prisoners are by no means usually the best behaved in prison. As a matter of fact troublesome prisoners are ordinarily those who retain some vestiges of will power and of individuality, and the exercise of those qualities is tolerably certain to bring them into constant conflict with the prison authorities. The least intellectually capable prisoners generally give least trouble in gaol, and are the most likely under the "indeterminate" system to secure early release.

On the other hand, Dr. Dugdale, an eminent criminologist, says that, broadly speaking, troublesome prisoners who are capable men are usually the most hopeful subjects for reform, and Commandant Booth, speaking from a large experience of the criminal classes, expresses much the same opinion.

It may here be noted that in the course of our correspondence with the local authorities with reference to the cases of individual prisoners in Fremantle Gaol, we have invariably found that they all attach great importance to the prisoner's record in the gaol. If this shows that the prisoner has been guilty of breaches of discipline, he is always set down as being a very bad case, although it is perfectly certain that members of the habitual offender class, whose life is one long career of crime, usually give little or no trouble to those responsible for their custody when in prison.

Necessary as the prison may be as a punitive agent we cannot regard any form of imprisonment as having been shown to be particularly successful as a reforming influence. On the contrary, institutional life with its fixed rules, its removal of the elements of hope, of anxiety, and of the necessity for individual enterprise, tends to make the prisoner more or less of an automaton.

For this reason your Commissioners prefer short, sharp, and severe sentences to prolonged terms of imprisonment as a means of dealing with all minor offences.

We do not desire to make the prison a comfortable home for the depraved members of society, from whatever cause their depravity may have arisen. In our opinion prison life should, consistently with requirements of ordinary humanity and of justice, be made as uncomfortable to the prisoner as possible.

Short sentences, if made sufficiently severe, have the great advantage of relieving the taxpayer of the support of a number of persons who ought to be compelled to earn their own living, and the living of those people who are dependent upon them, and in the case of short-sentence men it is possible to adopt a lower and less expensive diet regimen than is practicable in the case of men who are incarcerated for a long term of years.

The degree of certainty or of uncertainty in the matter of punishment is one of the most important influences in determining the amount of crime in any country. It will invariably be found that crime is most abundant in those countries where its punishment is most uncertain. As Sir Samuel Romilly says:—"If it were possible that punishment as a consequence of guilt could be reduced to absolute certainty, a very slight penalty would be sufficient to prevent almost every species of crime, except those which arise from sudden gusts of ungovernable passion."

—On the subject of capital punishment there is naturally room for very great difference of opinion, but the matter is obviously of such prime importance that it cannot be passed over when dealing with any penological system.

In England up to the year 1771 there were upwards of 200 crimes, the penalty for which was death. Even as late as the year 1837 there were 37 capital offences. At the present day there are still four, viz., treason, murder, piracy with violence, and setting fire to dockyards and arsenals. In Western Australia the death penalty for rape, which was abolished in England by the Act of 1861, is still retained, its abolition being provided for by one of the sections of the English Act, which was not adopted in our local Act, 29 Victoria. No. 5.

The tendency of modern times has, undoubtedly, in all civilised countries, been to reduce the number of offences for which capital punishment may be inflicted, and in some European countries the death penalty has been abolished altogether. But the result of this leniency cannot be said to have been altogether satisfactory.

In Italy, for instance, where imprisonment for life is inflicted in the case of murder, the number of murders and of crimes of violence of all kinds continues to increase, whilst the respect for human life is decreasing.

Convicted murderers are in Italy condemned to imprisonment for life, and according to the Naples correspondent of the London "Daily News" murders repeatedly occur even within the prison which has been specially set apart for the reception of hundreds of capital offenders.

One of the main objections to life imprisonment as a substitute for the gallows is that it is, in the