Oriental Prisons / Prisons and Crime in India, the Andaman Islands, Burmah, China, Japan, Egypt, Turkey

by Arthur Griffiths

“Every reform of prison discipline is almost of necessity attended at the outset with extraordinary expense. To exchange the common herding together of prisoners of all descriptions for careful classification; to substitute a strict and useful industry for idleness or for a light, ill-directed labour; to provide that the life which is irksome shall not also be unhealthy, and that the collection of the vicious shall not be a school of vice,—are all objects for the first approach of which large buildings must be erected, machinery formed and establishments contrived, and in the perfect attainment and maintenance of which great disappointment has after every effort and expense in many countries ensued. In no country is it likely that greater difficulty will be experienced than in this for the mere locality of the prison; that which is healthy in one season may become a pesthouse by a blast of fever or cholera, in another. For its form—the close yard which is adapted for classification and is not unwholesome in England, would be a sink of malaria in India. For food, for labour and for consort there are habits and an inveteracy of prejudice bearing upon health, opposing the best management of prisons such as are not to be encountered elsewhere, and superadded to all this is the absence of fitting instruments for control and management, while it is principally upon a perfect tact and judgment and an unwearying zeal that the success of every scheme of discipline has been found to depend.”

The classification of the gaols in the North-western Provinces and Oude is made according to the number of persons they can hold, as follows: the central prisons of the first, second, third and fourth class; the district prisons, and the lock-ups. In the central prisons, all prisoners sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for any period exceeding six months are confined; in the district prisons all prisoners sentenced to terms not exceeding three months are sent for every kind of crime, also civil prisoners and prisoners committed for trial at the sessions court; in the lock-ups all prisoners under trial before any court are lodged.

There are no reformatories for juvenile offenders in India. The government has so far considered that there is no need for their establishment. This conclusion has been arrived at by a comparison between the state of civilisation in the European countries which have adopted this plan of dealing with juvenile criminals and that of India. In the former there is a large class of vagrant, deserted and neglected children, which is quite unknown in the latter country. The following figures will serve to show the truth of this assertion. In Ireland, in 1866, out of a population of 6,000,000, there were 1,060 juveniles, under sixteen years, committed to prison for various offences; whereas in the whole of India, with a population of more than 150,000,000, the commitment of juveniles was about 2,000 in the same year.

In the presidency of Bombay there is an institution of very much the same nature as a reformatory, called the David Sasson Industrial and Reformatory Institution, which owes its origin to private benevolence, but which now receives some support from public resources. It is quite separate from the gaols and under different management and control.

In the North-western Provinces “all boys and lads under eighteen years of age, sentenced to periods of imprisonment for three months, are transferred as soon after sentence as possible to the nearest central prison, where they are placed under a regular system of education with training in industrial labour; they are confined in separate cells at night wherever there are a sufficient number of these for their accommodation, which is the case at Meerut, Agra and Gorruckpore, and at all prisons they attend school and labour for fixed periods during the day under directors specially employed for that purpose. Boys, whether confined in separate cells or association, are kept, day and night, entirely separate from the adult prisoners.” In the Punjab there is a reformatory in connection with the gaol of Goordaspore to which boys sentenced to more than six months’ confinement are sent. This reformatory was first established in the Sealkote gaol in 1862, but was subsequently removed to Goordaspore. The warder in charge, the gaol officials, the inspectors and the teacher approved by the educational department, are the only adults allowed to enter this yard. In the majority of district gaols there is a special yard set aside for juvenile prisoners, and in those gaols, where no such yard exists, when juvenile prisoners are received they are placed in cells, or other arrangements are made for separating them from the rest of the prisoners at night, and during the day they are made to work in a part of the yard by themselves. In the Lahore central gaol there is a separate yard for juveniles under a specially selected warder.

Nearly every presidency and province of India has its gaol code, drawn up under the sanction of the Prison Acts. That of Bengal was compiled by Frederic J. Mouat, M. D., and was introduced in the year 1864. “It borrowed freely,” he says, “from all the existing European and Indian rules which seemed to me to be suited for introduction in lower Bengal, and contained some special provisions based upon my personal experience, and study of prison systems at home and abroad.... It defined in considerable detail the duties, responsibilities and powers of all classes of prison officers; contained provisions for the classification and punishment of all classes of offenders; their management in sickness and in health; their food, clothing, work, instruction; and, in fact, every detail of discipline during their residence in gaol, their transfer from one prison to another, their discharge, and in the execution of capital sentences.” Since these rules were framed a system of remission of sentence as the reward for good conduct in gaol has been introduced, based on the principle of what is known as the Irish system.

One of the chief peculiarities of Indian prison management is the employment of convicts in the maintenance of discipline. From the earliest days, prisoners were employed in the discharge of all the menial duties of the gaols, cooking, washing, cleansing, scavengering, husking rice, grinding corn and the preparation of food. The difficulty of obtaining trustworthy warders on the salaries allowed, and the impossibility of preventing the introduction of forbidden articles through their agency, led to the trial in the gaol at Alipore of well-behaved, long-term convicts as prison guards. They were found to be more reliable than outsiders, and to discharge their duties more efficiently. The practice was adopted in other prisons, and when conducted with care and discretion, worked so well that the system has been extended throughout India. Special provision for it has been made in all the gaol codes. As a reward for good conduct and strict obedience to prison rules, all convicts whose behaviour has been exemplary throughout, and who have completed the prescribed term of hard labour, are eligible for the offices of convict warder, guard and work-overseer. The number employed in these offices can never exceed ten per cent. of the criminals in custody. All such appointments are made with great care and deliberation, and are subject to the sanction of the head of the prison department, by whom they are closely watched. They are liable to forfeiture for serious misconduct or breach of duty.

As a measure of economy in diminishing the cost of guarding prisons, and as a means of reformation in teaching self-respect and self-control, the plan has been successful everywhere in India, contrary to the usual experience of penal legislators. The privilege is much prized, and few prisoners who have held such offices have relapsed into crime, while many have obtained positions of trust on the completion of their sentences.

In the gaols of Bengal the privileges of caste are respected in general, but no false plea of caste is permitted to interfere with punishment. With care, tact and such knowledge of the people committed to his charge as every officer in command of a prison ought to possess, no great feeling of dissatisfaction is likely to arise or to be created. But from the jealousy with which all proceedings within the prisons are watched by the outside population, and the rapidity with which intelligence regarding them is spread, it is evident that extreme care must continue to be observed in the matter. While it is well known that imprisonment with its enforced associations is always attended with loss of caste, that, however, is readily restored by the performance of slight penances on release. It is instructive to find, on tracing them throughout the country, how the same castes, whatever differences of names they bear, are most prone to the commission of the same classes of crime.

Again, it is strange to discover that belief in witchcraft and the existence of witch-finders is a source of crime in the East at the present time. Among the Kols, an aboriginal race in the south-west of Bengal, each village is supposed to have a tutelar divinity, generally an evil spirit to whom is assigned all the sickness, epidemics, diseases and misfortunes which occur in the village. To this spirit certain lands are assigned, and the produce of this land is used in propitiatory sacrifices. The existence of this superstition is said to be a frequent cause of murder and extortion. The Kols believe in the powers of divination of “witch-finders,” who are usually consulted when anything untoward occurs in a village. This witch-finder, who often lives at a distance, performs certain absurd ceremonials, and pretends through them to discover who in the village has caused the anger of the tutelar deity. The person denounced is generally called upon to pay handsomely for the evil caused, and usually does so, but if he refuses he is frequently murdered, and whether he pays or not, if the misfortune does not cease he is driven from the village, if no worse fate overtakes him. All this is done in the utmost good faith, faith as absolute as that with which witch-hunting was pursued by the puritans of Scotland and America.