CHAPTER XII

IN PRISONS OFT

If every chapter in this book is ignored, I hope that this one will be read thoughtfully. For I want to show that a great national wrong, a stupidly cruel wrong, exists.

Probably all injustice is stupid, but this wrong is so foolish, that any man who thinks for one moment upon it will wonder how it came into existence.

I have written and spoken about it so often that I am almost ashamed of returning to the subject. Yet all our penal authorities, from the Home Secretary downwards, know all there is to be known about it.

I am going, then, to reiterate a serious charge! It is this: no boy from eight years of age up to sixteen, unless sound in mind and body, can find entrance into any reformatory or industrial school! No matter how often he falls into the hands of the police, or what charges may be brought against him, not even if he is friendless and homeless. Again, no youthful prisoner under twenty-one years of age, no matter how bad his record, is allowed the benefit of Borstal training unless he, too, be sound in mind and body. This is not only an enormity, but it is also a great absurdity; for it ultimately fills our prisons with weaklings, and assures the nation a continuous prison population.

It seems very extraordinary that prison and prison alone should be considered the one and only place suitable for the afflicted children of the poor when they break any law, but so it is.

The moral hump is tolerated, even patronised in reformative institutions, but the physical hump, never!

Cunning, dishonesty and rascality generally may be tolerated, but feebleness of mind or infirmity of body never! All through our penal administration and prison discipline this principle prevails, and is strictly acted upon.

Let me put it briefly; prison, and prison only, is the one and only place for afflicted youth when it happens to break one or the other of our laws.

We have numerous institutions, half penal and half educative, that

exist absolutely for the purpose of receiving homeless, wayward or criminally inclined youthful delinquents.

These institutions, I say, although kept going from public funds, refuse, absolutely refuse, to give training to any youthful delinquent who suffers from physical infirmity or mental weakness.

Think of it again! all youthful delinquents suffering from any infirmity of body or mind, are refused reformative treatment or training in all publicly supported institutions established for delinquent youth.

He may be a thief, but if he is a hunchback they will have none of him. He may be a danger to other children, if he has fits he will not be received. He may rob the tills of small shopkeepers, but if he is lame, half-blind, has heart disease, or if his brain is not sound and his body strong, if he has lost a hand, got a wooden leg, if he suffers from any disease or deprivation, prison, and prison only, is the place for him. So to prison the afflicted one goes if over fourteen; if under fourteen back to his home, to graduate in due time for prison.

This is no exaggeration, it is a true picture, and this procedure has gone on till our prisons have become filled with broken and hopeless humanity.

Could any one ever suggest a more disastrous course than this? Why, decency, pity, or just a grain of common sense ought to teach us, and would teach us if we thought for a moment, that it is not only wrong but supremely foolish.

For there is a very close connection between neglected infirmity, mental or physical, and crime, a connection that ought to be considered, and few questions demand more instant attention. Yet no question is more persistently avoided and shelved by responsible authorities, for no means of dealing with the defective in mind or body when they commit offences against the law, other than by short terms of useless imprisonment, have at present been attempted or suggested. It seems strange that in Christianised, scientised England such procedure should continue even for a day, but continue it does, and to-day it seems as little likely to be altered as it was twenty years ago. Let me then charge it upon our authorities that they are responsible for perpetuating this great

and cruel wrong. They are not in ignorance, for the highest authorities know perfectly well that every year many hundreds of helpless and hopeless degenerates or defectives are committed to prison and tabulated as habitual criminals. Our authorities even keep a list on which is placed the names of these unfortunates who, after prolonged experience and careful medical examinations, are found to be "unfit for prison discipline." This list is of portentous length, and to it four hundred more names are added every year. This is of itself an acknowledgment by the State that every year four hundred unfortunate human beings who cannot appreciate the nature and quality of the acts they have committed, are treated, punished and graded as criminals. Now the State knows perfectly well that these unfortunates need pity, not punishment; the doctor, not the warder; and some place where mild, sensible treatment and permanent restraint can take the place of continual rounds of short imprisonment

alternated with equally senseless short spells of freedom.

No! not freedom, but a choice between starvation, prison or workhouse. Now this list grows, and will continue to grow just so long as the present disastrous methods are persisted in!

Why does this list grow? Because magistrates have no power to order the detention of afflicted youthful offenders in any place other than prison; they cannot commit to reformatory schools only on sufferance and with the approval of the school managers, who demand healthy boys.

So ultimately to prison the weaklings go, and an interminable round of small sentences begins. But even in prison they are again punished because of their afflictions, for only the sound in mind and body are given the benefit of healthy life and sensible training.

Consequently in prison they learn little that can be of service to them; they only graduate in idleness, and prison having comforts but no terrors, they quickly join the ranks of the habitues. When it is too late they are "listed" as not suitable for prison treatment. Year by year in a country of presumably sane people this deplorable condition of things continues, and I am bold enough to say that there will be no reduction in the number of our prison population till proper treatment, training, and, if need be, detention, is provided in places other than prison for our afflicted youthful

population when they become offenders against the law.

But reformatory and industrial schools have not only power to refuse youthful delinquents who are unsound in mind or body; they have also the power to discharge as "unfit for training" any who have managed to pass the doctor's examination, whose defects become apparent when under detention.

From the last Official Report of Reformatory Schools in England and Wales I take the following figures--

During the years 1906-7-8 14 imbeciles (males) were discharged on licence from reformatory schools; and during the same three years no less than 93 (males) were discharged by the Home Secretary's permission as "unfit for physical training." The 14 imbeciles in the Official Report are classified as dead, and the 93 physically unfit are included among them "not in regular employment."

For the same period of years I find that 28 (girls) were discharged from English reformatory schools as being physically unfit.

The Official Report of Industrial Schools includes England, Wales and Scotland, and for the same three years I find that 13 (males) were discharged from industrial schools as being imbeciles, and 116 (males) as being "unfit for physical training."

Strange to say, in the Annual Report the physically unfit are included among those "in casual employment," and the imbeciles are included among the "dead."

From the same Official Report we have the statement that in one year, 1909, in England and Scotland 991 (males) and 20 (females) who had been discharged from reformatory schools were re- convicted and committed to prison.

How many of them were mentally or physically defective we have no means of knowing, for no information is given upon this point; but there is not the slightest doubt that a large number of them were weak-minded, though not sufficiently so to allow them being classified as imbeciles.

The terrible consequence of this procedure may also be gathered from the Report of the Prison Commissioners for England and Wales 1910, from which it appears that during the year 157 persons were certified

insane among the prisoners in the local and convict prisons, Borstal institutions and of State reformatories, during the year ending March 31, 1910.

In addition to the above there were 290 (213 males and 77 females) cases of insanity in remanded and other unconvicted prisoners dealt with during the year, including 14 males and 2 females found "insane on arraignment," and 173 males and 65 females found insane on remand from police or petty sessional courts. There were 30 (20 males and 10 females) prisoners found "guilty" but "insane" at their trial.

But the most illuminating report comes from the medical officer at Parkhurst Convict Prison; these are his words--

Weak-minded convicts and others whose mental state is doubtful continue to be collected here. The special rules for their management are adhered to. The number classified as weak-minded at the end of the year was 117, but in addition there were 34 convicts attached to the parties of weak-minded for further mental observation.

"The conduct and tractability of these prisoners naturally vary with the individual; a careful consideration of the history of each of the 117 classified weak-minded convicts indicates that about 64 are fairly easily managed, the remainder difficult to deal with, and a few are dangerous characters.

CLASSIFICATION OF WEAK-MINDED CONVICTS:--

(a) Congenital deficiency :- 1. With epilepsy . . . . . . 9 2. Without epilepsy . . . . . . 46 (b) Imperfectly developed stage of insanity 18 (c) Mental debility after attack of insanity 8 (d) Senility . . . . . . 2 (e)

Alcohol . . . . . . 6 (f)

Undefined . . . . . . 28

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