Page:Report of the Commission Appointed to inquire into the Penal System of the Colony.pdf/18

16, by draining, land for agricultural and horticultural occupation in the South-Western parts of the colony.

CLASSIFICATION.

Wherever classification is referred to and recommended in this report we propose that it should be prefaced by a process of exclusion in the following manner:— The exclusion of these, by greatly reducing the number of prisoners, enables us at once to realise an effective prison management, by founding our system upon the soundest possible basis, namely, that of complete separation of individuals from each other. Separate treatment of prisoners is not only punitive and deterrent in a high degree, but may also be rendered actively reformative.
 * 1) First offenders should be excluded from prison as far as possible. Their offences should be expiated by fines or enforced labor.
 * 2) Neither sex should be admitted to a gaol under the age of sixteen for males and eighteen for females.
 * 3) Lunatics, imbeciles, drunkards, vagrants (meaning thereby homeless wanderers, and not necessarily criminal characters), diseased persons, should all be treated in institutions especially adapted for them, not in gaol.
 * 4) The prison, so far as it applies to the association of prisoners, should not receive those sentenced to penal servitude. The latter, after completing their period of separate treatment, should go directly to a labor establishment.

REMUNERATION OF PRISONERS.

In our First Progress Report we recommended that every prisoner should be credited with a small sum for every month's work done by him whilst undergoing incarceration. In this way a small fund will be available for him on his discharge. At the present time many prisoners leave in a perfectly destitute condition, and inevitably soon drift into custody again, either as homeless vagrants or as criminals.

Something in the nature of the Prison Gate Brigades, which the other colonies liberally subsidise, is also urgently required. There are of course many prisoners who are perfectly able to shift for themselves, but there are others who are homeless and friendless, and to these latter the Prison Gate Brigades offer food and shelter pending the securing of suitable employment.

SALVATION ARMY PROPOSALS.

Commandant Booth, of the Salvation Army, favored your Commissioners with an outline of the proposals of the Army in regard to discharged prisoners. It appears that the Army desires to be placed in occupation of an area of well-watered ground, about 100 acres in extent, and within easy reach of Perth.

On such a block of land the Army proposes, if satisfactory arrangements can be made with the Government, to establish a farm and workshops for the industrial occupation of destitute discharged prisoners, who are willing to place themselves under the influences of this organisation. The Army is prepared also to receive, if desired, any prisoners who may be released on probation, although it can accept no responsibility in regard to the safe custody of the latter. Similar institutions under the control of the Army in New South Wales and Queensland receive from the Government a fixed grant of £300 and £250 a year respectively. Alternatively to a grant the Army asks for an allowance of 10s. per week for each man, so long as he remains at the farm.

An institution of this class would be worked in association with a Prison Gates Brigade, which is very urgently wanted in West Australia, and has proved to be of incalculable benefit in all the eastern colonies.

It is not going too far to say that no known organisation in the world is so thoroughly and constantly in touch with either the criminal or the destitute classes or both, as the Salvation Army. In this important particular the police departments of the various colonies cannot in any way compare with the Salvation Army, because the police necessarily know the individual merely qua offender or qua destitute, whilst the Army brings human sympathies into play, and follows him throughout every step of his career. If a discharged prisoner has been under the protection of the Army in Brisbane, its influences will follow him to Melbourne or Adelaide or Perth, and at any place he goes to he can be immediately subjected to a beneficial environment. As the Commandant points out, it is frequently urged against the claims of the Army to take an active part in the reformation of prisoners that it is a proselytising institution; but the obvious reply to this is that criminals can scarcely, for practical purposes, be regarded as valuable members of any church, and in any case there is no obligation upon the part of any prisoner to avail himself of the services and assistance which the Army offers.

FEMALE OFFENDERS.

There are, fortunately, but few female offenders, comparatively speaking, in Western Australia. Very few of the female prisoners have volunteered to give us any evidence, and in those cases where they did nothing was elicited of any value affecting penological principles. For the most part their evidence related purely to matters of personal detail.