Page:Report of the Commission Appointed to inquire into the Penal System of the Colony.pdf/5

 each prisoner should be permitted to dispose of a definite proportion of the amount at any time to his credit by way of remittances for the relief of relatives dependent upon him.

Your Commissioners regard it as an altogether undesirable state of affairs that it should be possible for a man, originally sentenced for a short term of imprisonment, to be further imprisoned for offences within the Gaol for an indefinite period within public trial. Yet such is at present the case. In England no prisoner can have the original term of his sentence increased under any circumstances, except by order made in open court. No punishment, unless inflicted in open court, should take the form of lengthening the original term of sentence.

The present practice of lengthening the sentences of refractory prisoners at the discretion of the visiting magistrates is a very much more serious matter than might at first sight be supposed. With every desire to do abstract justice, it is obvious that the magistrates who are called upon to punish offences against prison discipline have a tendency to view with exceptional severity offences which the general public would not regard as deserving of particularly harsh treatment. For instance, to take the familiar case of an escapee. To the Gaol officials, and to those accustomed to deal with prisoners, the offence of escaping from Gaol presents itself as one of special enormity, and as one, therefore, calling for exceptionally severe punishment. Your Commissioners confess that they do not in any way share this view, The desire to regain liberty is a perfect natural one, and is generally possessed most keenly by the best class of prisoners, i.e., to men of whom the greatest hopes may be entertained that they will, when reformed, prove the most energetic and useful citizens. If a prisoner escapes, it is clearly the fault of those to whom he was committed for safe custody, and to punish the escapee by flogging, as has been done in some cases, or by 12 months in irons, as has been done in others, appears to the Commissioners to be merely a judicial brutality, not in accordance with the logical and merciful tendencies of our age and times.

In the opinion of your Commissioners much too frequent use is made of the dark cells as a mode of punishment. This form of punishment is to many prisoners a cruel form of torture, whilst on others it admittedly produces little or no effect. For its results it depends entirely upon the temperament of the individual, Some authorities have laid it down that it presses most severely upon the educated or imaginative criminal, but this is very doubtful. Men of phlegmatic temperament seem to be very slightly, if at all, affected by it. They are much more readily brought to submission by a reduction in their dietary scale. In fact, it appears from the evidence that there are men who would rather do three days in the dark cell than work one hot day in the quarry. But on some men of excitable temperament, the effect is distressing, and almost maddening, whilst in every case there is the obvious danger of the visual organs being permanently and dangerously affected.

It is the practice at Fremantle for a sentence of three days' bread and water to carry with it as a matter of course "dark cells." We think this both unnecessary and undesirable. The punishment of "dark cells" should never be given, except on the written order of the authorities having power to inflict it.

It is the opinion of your Commissioners that there will be very few offences against the discipline of the Gaol rendering any such extreme measures as the "dark cell" necessary if their recommendations are carried out.

Your Commissioners would direct attention to a fact which is perhaps not publicly known, that owing to an important alteration in the scale of remissions, the same nominal sentence to-day carries with it practically double the term of imprisonment that it would have done if given before the end of the year 1897.

On the general question of long sentences your Commissioners are of opinion that the sentences given by the courts are unduly long, regard being usually had to the length of the sentence rather than to the quality of the punishment inflicted. They are probably a legacy left to us by the old convict system of the colony. Long sentences fail altogether in their object, and press most severely on the taxpayers who are responsible for the maintenance of the prisoners during their incarceration. Beyond a certain point which is very soon reached, no sentence of imprisonment is either punitive or deterrent, although under a proper system it may possibly, in some circumstances, be reformative. So far as the average prisoner is concerned, the worst part of the punishment is endured during the first few weeks of incarceration. If he feels any sense of humiliation or shame, that rapidly disappears by association with others who are all in like case. The deprivation of liberty presses hardly upon some—usually the very best of the prisoners—but after a time all persons, whether in Gaol or out of it, adapt themselves to their surroundings. In the result, the imprisonment at a very early date reaches the limit of the punitive stage. That in the majority of cases our system of punishment is neither deterrent nor reformative is shown by the fact that "once a prisoner, always a prisoner," is the accepted axiom of the Gaol, and that the great majority find their way back again sooner or later.

In every case it should be the object of the authorities to make the punishment sharp, severe, and effective, so that, while the first sentence shall be inflicted at the minimum of cost to the taxpayer, and the maximum of discomfort to the criminal, consistently with humanity, there shall be as little probability as possible of the taxpayer being called upon at an early date to pay for the second or third punishment of the same offender.

It is an undoubted hardship that an offender should be brought down from some remote part of the province for incarceration, and eventually be discharged at Fremantle without any means of returning to his home. To some extent this has been dealt with with under the heading of "Remuneration of prisoners," but it is urged that every discharged prisoner who desires it should be provided with a second-class ticket to any point on the railway system.