Whatever the cause—and it is easier to state the effect than apportion it among the causes that have produced it, there has been a steady diminution in the numbers sentenced to imprisonment, as compared with increased population in the years succeeding 1878, when the new system came into force. In that year the population of England and Wales stood at twenty-five millions and 10,218 was the number imprisoned of both sexes. In 1904 the general population was 33,763,468, while no more than seventy-nine hundred were imprisoned. And during the intervening years there has been a continuous falling off in the number of imprisonments.
"It certainly seems justifiable to infer from these figures that our penal reformatory system has been made effective," says Du Cane, in his "Punishment and Prevention of Crime;" "and the remarkably steady and sustained decrease ... must be considered to show that recent legislation, with which it so remarkably coincides in point of time, has in principle and execution not only completely succeeded in promoting uniformity, economy, and improved administration, but also in that which is the main purpose of all—the repression of crime." The decrease is even more remarkable in the convict prisons, those which receive the more serious offenders, sentenced to penal servitude.
The convict population of Great Britain is now just about half what it was some five and twenty years ago. Going back to 1828, when the population of the country was barely fifteen millions, there were in all,—in the penal colonies at the Antipodes, at Gibraltar and Bermuda, the Hulks at home and the Millbank Penitentiary, just fifty thousand convicts, or ten times what the total is to-day with a population of nearly thirty millions. Carrying the comparison a little further, there were 3,611 sentenced to transportation in 1836; in 1846, 3,157; in 1856, 2,715; in 1866, 2,016 (combined with penal servitude); in 1876, 1,753 to penal servitude alone; in 1886, 910. In 1891 only 751 imprisonments are recorded. This progressive decrease is doubtless largely due to the growth of that more humane spirit which has in recent years mitigated the severity of punishment, and which prompts the judges to avoid the heavier penalties, as is shown, for instance, by the fact that in 1836 there were 740 life sentences, while in 1891 there were only four. It may be attributed also to the admitted punitive efficacy of penal servitude. That it is sufficient to visit even serious offences with shorter terms, a practice much facilitated by the recent reduction of the minimum period from five to three years, is amply shown by the record.
A few words must be devoted to the work of the convicts in the great British prisons. At Portland, during the years from 1848 to 1871 the convicts quarried no fewer than 5,803,623 tons of stone, all of which was utilised in the now famous breakwater, a stone dam in the sea nearly two miles in length and running into water fifty or sixty feet deep. The now presumably impregnable defences of the island, Portland Bill, the great works on the Verne, the barracks, batteries and casemates, were executed by convicts, who, as these works progressed, performed all the subsidiary services of carpentering, plate-laying, forging, and casting the ironwork. The enlargement of Chatham dockyard, a great feat of engineering skill, begun in 1856, was accomplished by convict labour. The site of St. Mary's Island, a waste of treacherous shore so nearly submerged by the tide that the few sheep that inhabited it were to be seen daily huddled together at the topmost point at high water, is now occupied by three magnificent basins capable of floating almost the entire British fleet. In fourteen years the convicts made one hundred and two million bricks for the retaining walls of these basins and excavated all of their muddy contents. The first, or repairing basin, has a surface of twenty-one acres; the second, or factory basin, twenty acres; the third, or fitting-out basin, twenty-eight acres. These basins were skilfully contrived to utilise the old watercourses which intersected the island. The bottom of the basins is twelve feet below the old river bed, and thirty-two feet below St. Mary's Island, which has been raised about eight feet by dumping on it the earth excavated from the basins. The whole island has been surrounded by a sea-wall and embankment nearly two miles in length, principally executed by convict labour. Work of a very similar nature and extent has been carried out at Portsmouth, and the enlarged dockyard there was given over to the admiralty a few years ago.
Dartmoor was an ideal penal settlement: a wild, almost barbarous place when the labour of the convicts was first applied to its development—to fencing, draining, making roads and parade-grounds, and to converting the old buildings into suitable receptacles for themselves and their kind. But the eventual employment of the prisoners was to be the farming of the surrounding moorland as soon as it was reclaimed; and this work has in effect occupied the Dartmoor convicts for more than forty years. What they have accomplished is best told by experts. The following is extracted from a report in a recent number of the Royal Agricultural Society's journal.
"The management of the prison farm, Princetown," reads the report, "has converted a large tract of poor waste land into some of the most productive enclosures in the kingdom. The farm, which lies in the wilds of Dartmoor, at an elevation of some fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred feet above the sea, ... comprises in all two thousand acres, the whole of which was mere common or unenclosed waste land prior to 1850.... The land is divided into square fields of from fifteen to twenty acres by high stone walls, built of granite boulders raised in the prison quarries or from the land as the work of reclamation proceeds. An excellent system of reclamation, with scientific rotation of crops, has been devised. If the herbage fails, or becomes unsatisfactory, the land is again dug up ... but so good has been the management ... that the greater portions of the pasture laid within the last fifteen or twenty years are now in far too good a condition to require rebreaking. One field which twenty years ago was mostly rushes is now able to carry a bullock per acre through the summer. No purer or cleaner pastures are to be found anywhere.... Sixty-seven acres of meadow land have been laid out for irrigation and utilisation of the sewage from the prison establishment, which at times numbers upwards of one thousand persons. A dairy herd of forty-five cows is kept, and all the cows are reared.... A flock of four hundred sheep, 'Improved Dartmoors,' is kept and has frequently been successful in the local show-yards. The wool, for so high a district, is remarkably good and of long staple. Pony mares and their produce are run on the fields. One of the ponies bred on Dartmoor won first prize in its class at the Royal Show at Plymouth. Thirty acres of garden are devoted to the growth of garden vegetables, of which all kinds are grown, and much success has been obtained with celery and cucumbers. The whole of the work is done by convicts, without the aid of horses except for carting."
A great extension of convict labour has been seen in recent years. It has been employed in novel ways which would have been impossible but for the excellence of the present prison organisation and of the discipline now enforced. In 1876 a small prison for one hundred inmates was erected at Chattenden, near Upnor, on the north bank of the Medway. It was intended to house convicts to be engaged in constructing new magazines at Chattenden for the war department. The prison was built by a detachment of prisoners sent across the river from Chatham convict prison, and then by tramway to the site of the proposed work. The tramway passed through dense woods, and the site of the prison was surrounded by thick undergrowth. These seemingly hazardous operations were carried out without a casualty of any kind; no gang chains were used; no escapes, successful or frustrated, were recorded. The work was continued for nearly ten years, when the magazines were finished, and the prison, which throughout had been treated as a branch of the great headquarters prison at Chatham, was closed. During these ten years, besides the prison buildings, this small party had put up five large bomb-proof magazines, in addition to the formation and drainage of the roads, traverses and slopes adjoining. The experiment at Chattenden afforded an example of the use to which convict labour can be put, and of the circumstances under which comparatively small works can be undertaken by a small body of convicts in a separate prison erected for the purpose. A number of the buildings, being easily removable, have since been taken down to be otherwise made use of.
It is only fair to observe here that the same experiment had been made under the Austro-Hungarian government by M. Tauffer. This eminent prison official had recommended the adoption of the "progressive system" as far back as 1866, and had carried it out under his own direction at Leopoldstadt and Lepoglava, where his prisoners were employed on outside labour at the rate of thirty or even forty to each overseer, and yet no escapes occurred. These prisoners built another prison at a distance from Lepoglava, and were lodged for the purpose in sheds and outhouses beyond the prison walls. The doors were not even locked at night; there were no bolts or bars, the only barrier to escape being the rule that no one should leave the building after the hour for retiring at night.
The work at Chattenden had, however, been preceded by other similar and more extensive undertakings in England. The first was the preparation of a new and very simple prison edifice at Borstal, near Rochester; the second, the erection of the great separate prison at Wormwood Scrubs, with which I was myself closely identified from the beginning. The prison at Borstal was to house convicts who were to be employed under the war department in building fortifications for the defence of Chatham arsenal, and indirectly of London. As a preliminary measure, a boundary fence was erected at Borstal around the site of the new prison, and this work—but this alone—was performed by free labour, the very timber for the fence having been prepared in the prison at Chatham, four miles distant, which served as general centre and headquarters for the Borstal as well as the Chattenden prison. Parties of selected convicts were despatched daily to Borstal, under escort, of course, but without chains, and travelled back and forth in open vans. Temporary huts were put up for cooking, storage and the accommodation of the guard, and within sixteen weeks the prison buildings were so far advanced that forty cells were ready for occupation by prisoners, and the establishment was then regularly opened as a prison. During this sixteen weeks there had been no accidents, no escapes, no misconduct. The convicts employed in this really "intermediate stage," having a larger amount of license and liberty than Sir Walter Crofton had ever dreamed of giving a prisoner, had behaved in the most exemplary manner. Within a year afterward, when the number of convicts had gradually increased to more than two hundred, all necessary buildings had been put up to accommodate a total population of five hundred prisoners.
The completion of the prison left the convicts free to carry out the works for which they had been brought to Borstal. But the very nature of these works was such as to startle prison administration of the old school, and to forbid, at first thought, the employment of convicts upon them. The site of the proposed forts was quite in the open country, and the first of them, Luton, at least two miles from Borstal prison. How were the convicts to be conveyed to and fro, without loss of time, without unnecessary fatigue, and above all, without risk of losing half the number by the way? A novel plan was boldly but happily conceived, and its absolutely successful adoption constitutes an epoch in prison history. It was decided to lay down a narrow gauge railway, along the line the forts were intended to cover, and send the prisoners to their work by train. Part of this plan was the invention of a special kind of railway-carriage, constructed with a view to safe custody, and this very unique and ingenious contrivance has since been constantly employed. These carriages are small, open, third-class carriages, with a sliding gate of iron bars. When the train is made up, a chain passes along the exterior of these gates, and it is padlocked at each end. The warders on duty occupy raised seats at each end of the train, and have the convicts under supervision continually. The compartments hold from eight to ten men each, and a train-load is made up of from eighty to a hundred convicts. The engines used are the once famous little locomotives that were sent out to the Sudan for service on the Suakim-Berber railway. Extreme simplicity characterises all these arrangements, yet they are perfectly suitable and quite sufficient. The same device was tried with success at Portsmouth convict prison, for the conveyance of convicts to Whale Island, distant a mile or more from the prison.