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Juvenile Ward the most corrupt.

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before the public as alone suited for juvenile frames. If this be the case it is to be lamented; because it destroys all hope of that effectual reformation which, in their case, the least sanguine might expect. The country must have proof that this backward march is not the result of a too hasty generalization, as it is unquestionably opposed to the whole torrent of authoritative opinions.

"The young will learn," says a writer of great candour and of great accuracy, who has published the best book on Prisondiscipline that has appeared for many years-" The young will learn from each other the lessons of demoralization as effectually and more eagerly than they would receive the vicious instruction of older and more hardened companions. The ward for juvenile offenders in every Prison I believe to be the most corrupting and pernicious."-2 Field, p. 376. They have greater pleasure than their elders in communicating their knowledge. The young heart, too, is quickly hardened by contact with the other "braves" of the profession, and when the period of imprisonment expires, they renew an acquaintanceship begun in misfortune. The Reverend R. Burnett, chaplain of Lewes jail, in insisting upon the necessity of separation for all criminals, specially declares, that " of juvenile prisoners, whose sentences are generally short, I believe this to be especially true.”—2 Ibid. 377. Captain Hansbrow, the governor of Lancaster Castle, was asked before the Committee of the House of Lords, if "boys go out worse than they come in?" He answered"Unless they are kept separate. I think that an impression may be made upon them if they are kept separate; but so long as they are associated together, they go out as bad as they went in, OR GENERALLY WORSE.'

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In truth, a youth so treated passes his life alternately in plundering the public out of prison, and in burdening the Prisonrates within it. He runs through the whole circle of convictions, from the petty theft to the highway robbery and assault; instructing others, as he ascends in the profession, in that ingenuity which has made himself famous, and that daring which has defied all the terrors of punishment, and all the correctives of instruction. He is elated with the thought of having left the ordinary crowd of evil-doers and surpassed them all-Rien ne fait dire-rien ne fait faire-autant de sottises, que le désir de montrer de l'esprit, was a remark of the Abbé du Bos, and holds particularly true of Jail society. Can anything be more striking than the evidence of Mr. Sergeant Adams, who declares, that he has often seen little boys, when first brought into jail, overwhelmed with alarm, and clinging with anxiety to the very policeman who brought them there; yet in three days he has

seen these children, under the electrical contamination of Jail association, dancing in the yards in joyful glee, with those reprobate companions among whom compassion or ignorance has thrust them.-First Report, Lords, p. 12. The conclusion derived from such facts by lawyers, magistrates, and judges, we shall give in the language of the Lord Justice-Clerk of ScotEvery imprisonment," he says, "particularly those of juvenile offenders, and for first offences, ought to be on the separate-system, fully and consistently acted upon."-Appendix to First Report, Lords, p. 73. And Mr. Clay, the chaplain of Preston jail, thus states his experience in England:

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"I cannot fully impress upon the Committee the value of a system of separate confinement till I shew it in opposition to the ill effect of the former mode. I take, for instance, the committal of boys about and under the age of 17-in the year 1840, I think it was. I traced those boys for two years and a half, and I found, that of those who had come in for the first time in that year, before that year and another year and a half had elapsed, they came in at the rate of 56 per cent. Now, as I have told the Committee, during the two years and a half we have been under the improved system, we have had altogether only three boys relapsed out of about 110."-First Report, Lords, p. 139.

In his recent report Mr. Perry, one of the Inspectors of Prisons, states

"That the places of confinement in the southern and western districts are 80 in number, of which seven are conducted on the separate system. In the year from 29th September 1844 to 26th September 1845, the daily average of prisoners in the whole 80 places was 4361. In the seven on the separate system it was 644;-37 prisoners were affected with insanity, in nine of whom the symptoms first showed themselves during the period of their imprisonment; but of these nine not one occurred in the seven prisons on the separatesystem."

With such evidence, the eminent persons to whom have been entrusted the direction of the great national establishment at Perth, have thought it their duty to return to the old system of association. They announce their resolution in their Ninth Report in the following terms:

"The results of much personal observation, as well as the reports relative to this subject, which we received from time to time from the chief officers of the Prison, were such as to lead us gradually to entertain great doubts whether the system could in all its rigour be applied with advantage, or even with safety, to prisoners of very tender years, and sentenced to long periods of confinement, such as constitute a large proportion of the juvenile prisoners sent to the General Prison. As our experience extended our doubts increased, and we were ultimately impressed with a strong apprehension that however beneficial the operation of the system might be, in the case of adult

Questionable Discipline proposed for Juveniles.

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prisoners of both sexes, its strict enforcement could scarcely fail tó have an injurious tendency in relation to a considerable number of the very young prisoners, particularly males."-P. 10.

Reference is then made to a Report by Captain Kincaid, one of the Scotch Inspectors of Prisons, wherein he recommends the change which his superiors adopted, and to which Sir George Grey gave his sanction. All juvenile male prisoners, therefore, to whom the Governor and Surgeon think the indulgence should be extended, are to be assembled together each morning for prayers, and are then to be exercised for half an hour in gangs of eight or ten; and, farther, they are to be taught in classes by the Prison teachers. In other words, the system is practically abandoned with reference to juvenile male criminals; for we hold the discretionary power given to the Governor to mean nothing but a pardonable means to reconcile the public mind gradually to the change.

If this were a matter to be settled by authority the question would be at rest. The Report bears the sanction of a crowd of honourable and right honourable names, which almost awes remonstrance into silence. But when we remember the still more numerous host of honourable men who have erred upon a subject upon which mankind has so often changed its opinions, it will be no disrespect to examine the grounds upon which this startling conclusion rests. The Directors have assigned no reason for their opinion. They leave it upon its naked merits, which, standing opposed to so many other authorities, is a great omission. It stands opposed, moreover, to the following dissent of one of their own number. The Lord Justice-Clerk declares that he signs the Report "under a dissent from the opinion that the separate-system is not beneficially applicable in its rigour to juvenile offenders, for whom I am of opinion that it is in an especial manner most appropriate and serviceable, being convinced that imprisonment, accompanied with any kind of companionship, whether in work, or instruction, or exercise, will have no deterring effect on that class, and be attended with all the bad results of contamination and evil influence." The grounds upon which the Report proceeds cannot consist in any injury to the physical constitution, because males are the parties who are said to suffer; and they ought to be more calculated, from their robuster frame, to endure restraints than females. On turning to Captain Kincaid's Report, (to which we are indebted for this retrograde movement,) we cannot find any more specific enumeration of the grounds upon which it was made. All that he says is, "that the separate-system, as carried out at the General Prison, though in strict conformity with the rules provided, has an injurious tendency, mentally as well as bodily,

on many of the very young prisoners."-Thirteenth Report, p. 16. He admits, however, that the Prison-authorities of Dundee and Cupar "expressed some astonishment at the idea;" and in the conflict between the two, we have no particulars upon which a judgment could be founded. There is nothing but an unreasoned opinion, the value of which we can only appreciate after its author has told us of the grounds on which it rests. How many of the prisoners were shamming when under examination? What care was taken to ascertain the true cause of suspicious symptoms? How often were they examined either by Directors or Inspectors? Were the visits (other than those of Mr. Whigham) more than once or twice a-year? Was the apparent insanity not the exhibition of a fit of sullenness-the physical decay the result of pre-existing disease? It is common, as Field tells us, to try the "mad trick" upon the sympathies of casual visitors who enter the cells with a stamp of authority, amid the cringing politeness of the keepers, and whom the prisoner's instinct tells him are the great men upon whose nod his destiny depends, and whose sympathies he must endeavour to awaken.

We doubt the correctness of Captain Kincaid's generalizing, when we find him, in the first page of his Report, declaring that the Scotch prisons" are in the present day considered to be in a very satisfactory state;" at the same time that the pages which immediately follow, prove that they are exactly the reverse. The Prison of Ayr, for example, "was dangerously overcrowded; three, four, or five persons in every cell, the dimensions of which are not usually considered fit for a single prisoner." It had, moreover, no chaplain, and 140 prisoners.P. 1. The Prison of Dundee was in a similar condition in regard to accommodation.-P. 4. That of Falkirk "is a damp dilapidated place, incapable of improvement, and totally unfit to be used as a Prison; and yet its two miserable cells are sometimes required to accommodate seven males and three females." The keeper of the Irvine Prison states, that "he has only one pair of blankets, though the number of prisoners sometimes amount to seven at a time; and that the bed-ticks have not been washed, nor the straw within them changed, for the last five years."-P. 6. In the Forfar Prison, sometimes nine prisoners" are obliged to occupy an apartment ten feet three and a half inches long, by five feet ten and a half inches in breadth, with the door opening inwards, and in which there is only room for two beds."-P. 8. And in the Prison even of Edinburgh," there were only 127 out of 555 prisoners in confinement, to whom the separate-system could be applied, for want of room."-P. 15.

Luxuries-Criminals better treated than the Honest. 23

With such facts recorded by himself, we can scarcely understand the rash statement as to the "satisfactory" condition of the Scottish prisons. If it were intended as a compliment, in the mac-sycophant style of "makin' everybody pleased wi' himsel," or as a rolling quantity of words to turn a sentence, it might be dismissed as harmless. But it shakes one's confidence in the other generalizations to which this gentleman has come, and which have led to results so important and alarming.

The prison at Perth is one of the most expensive model-prisons in the world. Though supported by large funds, and under the direction of men distinguished for their rank, their humanity, and their knowledge, it has failed to accomplish one single object of its institution; and the appalling fact has been admitted by one of its Directors, that no less than SIXTY-SEVEN PER CENT. of the prisoners who endure its discipline are recommitted. The reason may be traced to a system at variance with the character of punishment, and which has been treated by Lord Denman thus, in speaking of juvenile offenders:

"I greatly dread the effect of giving them benefits and privileges which they never could have hoped for, but from the commission of crimes. I own myself extremely jealous of the gratuitous instruction of the young felon in a trade, merely because he is a felon, and of the displacement of the honest from employment, by his success in thus obtaining it. Perhaps this is the most important branch of criminal law; for the age enquired of is that at which the habits are formed, and the path of life is chosen. I hold the only legitimate end of punishment to be, to deter from crime; but I think I perceive in some of the theories of benevolent men such a mode of administering the criminal law as to encourage instead of deterring."—Appendix to First Report, Lords, p. 3.

Whether or not this was intended to apply to the prison at Perth it certainly hits off that great renovating shop for the enfeebled constitutions of exhausted criminals. The system there is, a literal reduction to practice of the precept, that when a man strikes you upon the one cheek, you are to turn to him the other also. The comforts of existence are liberally supplied by an injured community, to the ruffians who have wronged them. We take them from the streets-corrupted and corrupting,-place them in the bath,―cleanse them from outward pollution,—clothe them in warm and comfortable garments, and locate them in an apartment, the possession of which they never anticipated even in their dreams. It is well lighted, ventilated, and warmed. They have employment given them to occupy attention and pass the time. They are addressed in the language of kindness; educated men interest themselves in their welfare. From a state of humiliation they are raised to a position of self-esteem. They

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