“In spite,” says the author just quoted, “of our prison discipline, our classification system, our silent system, and our separate system, all these efforts that we make, and perhaps boast that we make, to turn back the law-breaker to honest paths, nearly 30,000 criminals are each year sent to prison, who only know the higher classes as objects of plunder, and the maintenances of law and order as things; if possible to be destroyed, and if not avoided.” £170,000 are annually expended in London for the reformation of such offenders, and every modern appliance that mercy or ingenuity can devise is brought to bear upon our prison system, with what results may be clearly ascertained by the large and increasing number of re-commitments—which form a proportion of something like 30 per cent. on such as have been previously incarcerated; while these, be it remembered, represent only the number of those who render themselves amenable to justice by detection; there being no means of ascertaining how many continue their avocations with impunity.
Results like these are sufficiently disheartening to the philanthropist, and embarrassing to the statesman, and serve to show that however necessary it may be to devise methods for criminal reformation, it is even more incumbent upon us, and far more remunerative in the end, to carry out the principles of prevention.
The various agencies, at work in London, for the suppression of vice and crime, may be treated under the following heads, which will serve to indicate their relative value and proportionate influence; and though, in their popular sense, many of the words used, may appear to be only convertible terms, it is intended, for the sake of perspicuity and arrangement, to assign to each a distinctive and separate meaning.
Thus the word curative is used, not in its loose, remedial sense, as applying to expedients calculated to produce a diminution of crime, but must be understood as tending to the entire and absolute change of the human will, and the renovation of a corrupt nature—such a thorough change, in fact, as is implied in the word cure.
| Agencies for the suppression of vice and crime. | 1. Curative (radical). |
| 2. Preventive (obstructive). | |
| 3. Repressive and punitive (compulsory). | |
| 4. Reformative (remedial). |
1. Curative Agencies.
Under this head religion naturally occupies the foremost place; since, by its restraining influence and converting power, it presents the only true antidote, and the only safe barrier to the existence or progress of crime; all other specifics, however valuable, being liable to the imputation of failure, and their influence being either more or less efficacious, according to the various phases of moral disease exhibited by different mental and physical constitutions.
While applying political expedients for the cure of such disorders, it must ever be borne in mind, that the origin of all evil is to be found in the corruption of the human heart, and in its entire alienation from God; and it is only so far as these intrinsic defects can be remedied, that any permanent influence will be produced. That power, therefore, which seizes upon the citadel of the heart, controlling its affections, regulating its principles of action, and subduing its vicious propensities or illicit motions, is the only sovereign remedy for crime. In its natural state the heart may be compared to a fountain discharging only turbid and bitter waters; but while various agencies are employed to sweeten, disguise, or check this poisoned current, religion is the only influence which purifies the fountain head, and dries up the noxious springs, by placing a wholesome check upon the first motive principles of action—the thoughts.
The truth of these remarks is even more strikingly exemplified in the sudden and complete transformations of character, effected by the all-mighty influence of religion. The moral demoniac finds no difficulty in bursting the chains and fetters, in which society has attempted to bind him. He is never changed, only curbed, pacified, or restrained by such artificial modes of treatment. The wound may be cauterised, cicatrised, or mollified, but the poison, if left in the system, is sure to rankle and exhibit itself afresh. Religion, however, casts out the unclean spirit, restores human nature to its right mind, and asserts the supremacy of reason over that of passion and caprice.
Next in value and importance to religion itself, are those subordinate instrumentalities calculated to exhibit or extend its influence, and which bear the same relation to it as the means do to the end. Such are the various agencies, in that divinely-appointed machinery for the regeneration of mankind, the universal spread of “truth and justice, religion and piety” throughout the world, and for the formation and support of the spiritual Church of Christ.