Punishment does not deter the great mass of our fellow-citizens from committing crimes. They are law-abiding because they have no inclination to break the law and no inducement to do so. Let it press on them and we may hear another story. I am old enough to remember when in 1886 it was proposed to give Home Rule to Ireland; we had then professors and eminent citizens threatening to take up arms rather than allow the proposal to be carried. They were genuinely alarmed for the safety of their friends, and their respect for the law took a back seat for the time. It is an easy matter for many of us to stand by the laws, for we have not felt their pinch. That may be a reason why there is always such a difficulty in changing them, and why almost any change is supported by the poorer classes. Certain it is that even among the honest and welldoing poor there is a suspicion of the law and a reluctance to have anything to do with it. Those who are definitely at war with it and those who may be tempted to join them, are the only persons whom we may reasonably hope to deter from the commission of certain offences by our arbitrary punishment of those whom we catch; and even in their case there is no ground for the belief that the deterrent effect is such as to cause them to mend their way of living, but only to modify their methods. The real deterrent is social opinion, and when one of them comes out of jail it is quite evident that his imprisonment has not caused him to sink to the smallest extent in the estimation of those whose good opinion he values.
Serious crime has steadily declined in Glasgow as the nests of the criminals have been torn down. They are much less potent for evil when separated from each other than when herded together; but now and then there is a recrudescence of brutality and violence followed by demands for more severe treatment of those who are captured. In France, lately, the guillotine has been brought forth again with the object of frightening the bandits. I know nothing about conditions there; but it is quite evident that here we might have such a demand resulting from an outbreak of crime, caused not by leniency of treatment of prisoners, not caused indeed by the way in which any part of our penal system acts, but due to the impunity with which the sharpers and criminals in our midst are allowed to practise. So long as there is no provision whereby a man can obtain opportunity for honest work with a guarantee that the fruits of his labour will not be taken from him, there will be many unemployed. Most of them are quite well-disposed persons, but some of them are not. We cannot deal properly with the shirkers and sharpers till we have separated off the merely unfortunate. When we have seen that men have opportunity to support themselves we shall be fairly entitled to question the person who has no visible honest means of subsistence as to how he is obtaining his living; and, failing satisfaction, to deal with him. Meantime they are mixed up with the honest and law-abiding but unfortunate citizens, to the aggravation of the misery that honesty and poverty combined have brought on them.
Let them combine and act together and there is no saying how far they may go; not because our prisons are too comfortable; not because of anything that does or does not take place there; but because our cities are not properly managed; because we have permitted the aggregation of people under conditions that have been favourable to the growth of an anti-social sentiment; because we have bred the monster that strikes fear into us.
The treatment of the criminal may be wise, or it may be as foolish as I think it; but you might as well blame the method of treating a typhus case in hospital for the spread of that disease in an insanitary area, as blame the leniency of the courts for any outbreak of crime you may have in the areas which are known to be infested with criminals. All the elements are there for such an outbreak, and if it occurs it will be because we have permitted them to combine. How far we are justified in making one person the scapegoat for the sins of another, even if we could do it, is a matter for discussion by those who are concerned with such problems. For my own part, I do not think it fair to make an example of anybody, as it is called, and I do not believe that it serves any good purpose that could not be better attained by more rational means.