THE REASON OF PRISON EXPENDITURE.
The following paragraph occurs in the Preston Guardian:—
"The Cost of Crime.—The Reverend Mr. Clay, the Chaplain of the Preston House of Correction, estimates the loss caused to the public by fifteen pickpockets, whose careers he has traced, including the value of the property stolen, expenses of prosecution, and maintenance in gaol, at £26,500."
How many schoolmasters might have been had for the money which fifteen pickpockets have cost the nation?—and how many more than fifteen boys might those schoolmasters have prevented from becoming pickpockets?—and how much larger a sum than £26,500 would have thereby been saved?
Why cannot this great saving of money—to say nothing of vice and misery—be effected?
Simply because Papists and Protestants, High Church, Low Church, and Dissenters, cannot agree as to which of them shall have the privilege of preoccupying the minds of street-children with ideas about which bishops and doctors differ!