Sir Richard Temple, one of the most famous of India’s recent proconsuls, passes an approving verdict upon Indian prisons as they existed to the date of his volume, “India in 1880.” He was of the opinion that they were managed conscientiously and as far as possible, with the means available, according to accepted principles. They erred perhaps in construction, and showed many shortcomings as regards sanitation and disciplinary supervision, but an earnest desire to improve them has animated the Indian government and its officials. Native states, a little tardily, perhaps, have followed suit, and many possess prisons imitating some of the best points of the British system. They long clung, however, to the old barbarous methods of punishment, such as short periods of detention with flogging, various kinds of fining, compensation to the relatives of murdered men, and mutilation in cases of grave robbery. A capital sentence was very rarely inflicted.
Gradually public opinion in India awoke to the belief that something more than mere penal detention was needed for the treatment of prisoners. Outdoor labour, chiefly employed hitherto, was deemed injurious to health and demoralising to discipline, entailing undue expense in staff and guards; and so employment within the walls was substituted, with organised industries and manufactures by hand and with the help of machinery. The work done includes the weaving of carpets, which have a certain value and reputation, and much cotton and other fibres are manufactured; and the prisoners work at printing, lithography and other useful trades. The rules for wearing irons and fetters have been revised, and a consistent attempt has been made at classification by separating the old habitual criminals from the less hardened offenders. The system of earning remission by industry and good conduct, as practised in the British prisons, has been introduced with good results. Sanitation and ventilation have been much improved, so that mortality has greatly diminished. Solitary confinement is enforced as a means of discipline, but the cellular separation of prisoners by night makes only slow progress, and the association of all classes, good, bad and indifferent has a generally injurious effect upon prisoners.
According to Sir Richard Temple’s figures, there were in his time more than two hundred prisons in all India, exclusive of 386 lock-ups, and the daily average of inmates was 118,500, of whom only 5,500 were females. The annual number of crimes committed and charged was 880,000, and as more than one person is often concerned, the number of persons tried amounted to 970,000, of whom 550,000 were convicted, the balance being under trial or discharged. The labours devolving upon the police were obviously severe, and the prisons were always full.
Among the leading Indian prisons of to-day, one of the largest, the Ahmedabad gaol, was originally a Mohammedan college and was converted to its present purpose in 1820. Miss Mary Carpenter, who visited it in 1868, describes the gaol as follows: “It is a fine-looking building and near the citadel, but not of course well adapted to its present purpose, though the large space enclosed by the buildings gives it great capabilities of improvement. The first thing which struck us painfully was that the men had irons on their legs. This barbaric custom, which has long been exploded in our own country, is here preserved and is indeed general in India in consequence of the usual insecurity of the premises. The prisoners were working in large open sheds with little appearance of confinement. A number were occupied in weaving strong cotton carpets which appeared well calculated for wear. Others were making towelling of various kinds, very strong and good, from the cotton grown in the neighbourhood, while others were manufacturing pretty little cocoa mats and baskets. There was in general a criminal look in the culprits; they were working with good-will and appeared interested in their occupation, as in an ordinary factory. Except the chains, there was nothing of a penal description in the scene around us; and although this cheerful open place, with work at useful trades, might not give the intended feeling of punishment, still it was to be hoped that training these men to useful labour, under good moral influences, must have a beneficial influence on their future lives. On remarking this to the superintendent, he informed me that the salutary effect of the day’s work under proper supervision was completely neutralised, or even worse, by the corrupting influences of the night.
“There are four hundred prisoners in this gaol, for whom the number of sleeping cells is totally inadequate and three or four are consequently locked up together in the dark for twelve hours. There is no possibility during this period of preventing communication of the most corrupting nature, both moral and physical. No man convicted of a first offence can enter this place—which ought to be one of punishment and attempted reformation—without the greatest probability of contamination and gaining experience in evil from the adepts in crime who are confined with him; no young boy can enter without his fate being sealed for life.
“Juvenile delinquents, casual offenders, hardened thieves sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, are all herded together without any possibility of proper classification or separation. The condition of the thirty-two whom I had seen at the court on the day before was even worse than the others; they were all penned up together without work. There they had been for many months; and still they all were without any attempt being made to give them instruction, which might improve their moral and intellectual condition. This state of things was not owing to any neglect on the part of the superintendent, a man of enlightened benevolence, who devoted himself heart and soul to his work. The conditions of this gaol are such that though able and willing to remedy all these evils if authority and means were given to him, under the existing circumstances he is powerless. There is ample room on the premises for him to construct separate cells for all the prisoners with only the cost of material, but this is not granted to him; he cannot therefore carry out the printed regulations that the prisoners are not to be made worse while in custody. The regulations direct that the juveniles shall be separated from the adults; this is now simply impossible. Rules are made that the prisoners shall receive instruction, but no salary is allowed for a schoolmaster; there is no place appropriated for instruction and no time is granted for schooling; there are ten hours for labour, two hours are requisite for meals and rest and during the remainder of the twenty-four hours the prisoners are locked up. It is indeed permitted by the regulations that some prisoners may be employed as instructors but with the proviso that their hours of labour shall not be abridged for the purpose. Such instructors could not be expected to exercise any good moral influence on the other prisoners; yet to commence with these, if any educated men were among them, might lead to some better arrangement. The old college hall might possibly be employed as a schoolroom for a couple of hours after sunset; but light would then be required and oil did not form a part of the authorised expenditure. There were, then, obstacles to any kind of instruction being imparted to the prisoners which no amount of earnestness on the part of the officials or the superintendent could surmount.
“On inquiring whether there were any females in the gaol, we were conducted to a small separate court where in a dismal ward there were some miserable women employed in drudgery work. There were no female attendants and indeed no attempt appeared to be made to improve their wretched condition. I felt grieved and shocked that in any part of the British dominions women who were rendered helpless by being deprived of liberty, and thus fell under our special responsibility, should be so utterly uncared for as to be left under the superintendence of male warders and without any means of improvement. In all these observations I found that I had the full accordance of the superintendent; who, so far from being annoyed at the discovery of so many evils in this place, only rejoiced that some one should add force to his own representations by an independent testimony. He stated that he understood it to be in contemplation to build a large central gaol for the long-sentenced prisoners; the removal of these from his own gaol would of course remedy the overcrowding, though it would not enable each prisoner to have a separate cell. In the meantime the evils were very great from a sanitary as well as from a moral point of view. On one occasion more than a hundred had died owing to a want of good sanitary arrangements. Immediate attention to the condition of this gaol appeared therefore necessary. Considering this as a common gaol without long-sentenced prisoners, the following points suggested themselves as necessary to carry out the intentions of government. First, a number of well-ventilated sleeping cells should be constructed without delay, so as to enable every prisoner to have a separate cell for sleeping. Second, a trained and efficient teacher should be engaged to carry out instruction; arrangements should be made to provide a cheerful and well-lighted schoolroom. Educated prisoners may be employed as assistant teachers; these should be specially trained and instructed by the headmaster in their labour hours so as to provide as efficient a staff as possible. Third, the mark system and classification should be carried out. Fourth, prisoners awaiting trial should be kept in separation, but not under penal condition; the female department should be completely remodelled under female warders; all the advantages provided for the men should be given to the women.”
Mr. Routledge, speaking of the Alipore Gaol in Calcutta which he visited in 1878, says:—
“It contained 2,500 persons when I saw it, and with a few exceptions, as in the case of those undergoing punishment, all were employed in remunerative labour. There were masons erecting buildings, weavers making gunny-bag cloth of jute, a factory of jute-spinners, lithographers, painters, carpenters, blacksmiths and many other classes of workmen, all engaged in task work. If they exceeded the task a small sum was carried to their credit to be paid to them on leaving gaol. An amusing story was told of a shrewd Yorkshireman who when sent out to “manage a jute mill” was faced by the reality of some hundreds of criminals not one of whom knew anything of the work. First he despaired; then he hoped a little; finally he succeeded and had a capital jute mill. Dr. Faucus, the governor of the prison, told me that the men they sent out with trades hardly ever had returned; and there was an instance of a man whose time had expired begging permission to remain a little longer in gaol to more completely learn his trade. It was to my view a humane and judicious system.
“Eighteen months later I visited the Presidency Gaol in Calcutta, and the governor, Dr. Mackenzie, kindly showed me the wonders of the place. We saw in the yard, ‘a mild Bengalee,’ whom flogging, short diet and even the dreaded solitary confinement had failed to compel to work. ‘He is one of the few prisoners who ever beat me,’ the governor said. A hundred or so of the prisoners were breaking stones; some were on the tread-mill, a frightful punishment under such a sun; some were mat-making, on very heavy looms. We came to a separate cell, the inmate of which was a loose-jointed, misshapen, weak-looking, thin-faced native man, apparently about twenty-five years of age, though he might, for anything one could judge, have been any age from eighteen to forty. ‘That,’ said the governor, ‘was one of the most daring and relentless Dacoits we have ever had.’ In a cell a few yards distant, there was a grave and venerable looking old man who had attained the very highest grade in a different profession—that of a forger. He had been convicted in attempting to obtain money from an officer—I think the head of the police—by means of a letter purporting to be written by Mr. Reilly, the well-known detective. The forgery was perfect, and no one would have disputed the letter but for one small mistake; the two initial letters of Mr. Reilly’s Christian name were transposed. This interesting old gentleman when questioned as to the amount of work he had done, put his hands together and gravely confessed that it was far short of the task. The governor spoke sternly and threatened short diet. Evidently the old artist was out of his vocation when attempting slow, patient work. When the same question was put to the Dacoit he pleaded pitifully, ‘Only four bags, but I’ll do forty to-morrow.’ Forty was the number required to be sewed per day.