NOTES:
1 ([return])
[ See Appendix C.]
2 ([return])
[ The following extract from the recently issued 'Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and the Directors of Convict Prisons,' for the year ended March 31, 1910, Part I [Cd. 5360], published since the above was written, sets out the present views of the Authorities on this important matter:—
'Out of the present inmates of convict prisons over 40 per
cent have been previously in penal servitude, viz. out of
3,046 male convicts in convict prisons, 1,253 had been
previously sentenced to penal servitude, 672 once, 271
twice, 196 three times, and 114 four times or more. Mr.
Secretary Churchill has referred to us the question whether,
and in what way, it would be possible to make any impression
on this roll of recidivism—this unyielding corpus of
habitual crime. The problem is never absent from the minds
of those responsible for the administration of prisons and
the treatment of crime, and during recent years great
efforts have been made to improve the machinery of
assistance on discharge, fully impressed as we are with the
truth of the old French saying, "Le difficile ce n'est pas
emprisoner un homme, c'est de le relâcher." We have tried
to avail ourselves fully of the resources offered by such
powerful agencies as the Church Army, Salvation Army, as
well as other societies who have for years operated in this
particular field of charitable effort. We recognize the
ready help given by all these agencies. No doubt by their
efforts many difficult and unpromising cases have been
rehabilitated; but after full consideration we have come to
the opinion that the task of rehabilitation in the case of
men returning to freedom after a sentence of penal servitude
is too difficult and too costly to be left entirely to
voluntary societies, unaided by any grant of public funds,
and working independently of each other at a problem where
unity of method and direction is above all things required.
Mr. Secretary Churchill, to whom these views have been
represented, at once agreed that the difficulty lay in this
question of discharge, and that the official authority,
acting in close and friendly co-operation with the voluntary
societies must take a more active part than hitherto in
controlling the passage into free life of a man emerging
from penal servitude. ... A plan is now under consideration
for establishing a Central Agency of Control for Discharged
Convicts, on which both the official and unofficial element
will be represented, with a subsidy from public funds, the
purpose of which will be to take in hand the guidance and
direction of every convict on the day of discharge' (pp. 15,
16).]
3 ([return])
[ See Parliamentary Blue Book [Cd. 2562].]
4 ([return])
[ The scale of pay in the Salvation Array for Officers in charge of Corps (or Stations) is as follows:—For Single Men: Lieutenants, 16s. weekly; Captains, 18s. weekly. For Single Women: Lieutenants, 12s. weekly; Captains, 15s. weekly. For Married Men, 27s. per week and 1s. per week for each child under 7 years of age, and 2s. per week for each child between the ages of 7 and 14. Furnished lodgings are provided in addition.]
5 ([return])
[ But the day before this proof came into my hands it was my duty to help to try a case illustrative of these remarks. In that case a girl when only just over the age of sixteen had been seduced by a young man and borne a son. First the father admitted parentage and promised marriage. Then he denied parentage, and, apparently without a shadow of evidence, alleged that the child was the result of an incestuous intercourse between its mother and a relative. At the trial, having, it seemed, come to the conclusion that this wicked slander would not enable him to escape an affiliation order, he again frankly admitted his parentage. In the country districts, at any rate, such examples are common.—H. R. H.]
6 ([return])
[ The loss is being reduced annually, that for the financial year which has just closed being the lowest on record.]
7 ([return])
[ See Appendix A.]
8 ([return])
[ On this and other points see the Salvation Army's 'Articles of War,' Appendix B.]