The Criminal & the Community

by James Devon

In both the Borstal and the Preventive Detention Institution it is intended to teach the inmates habits and pursuits that will be useful to them in the world outside. What these are will altogether depend on what is to happen to them on liberation. No institution has yet been devised that even remotely resembles anything like the life that its inmates have to anticipate.

A great deal has been written about the advisability of teaching trades to persons in institutions, but the writers are never themselves artisans, and if they had any practical knowledge of the subject they would not write; there would be nothing to write about. More goes to the learning of a trade than the handling of the tools. Men have not merely to learn how to do a thing, but how to do it in association with other workers. They learn the trade not from the lectures of a teacher or the instructions of a foreman, but from watching the work of others, and imitating or avoiding their methods, as seems most suitable. Take the two best tradesmen in almost any workshop, and you will find that they set about their work each in a different way—each in the way he has found best suited to himself. The apprentices learn from them; and the lad or man who wants to learn a trade, is ill-advised indeed if he goes to a workshop where there are as many apprentices as journeymen.

It used to be said that the first year of a joiner’s apprenticeship was served in sweeping the shavings and in boiling men’s “cans”; and there was a good deal of truth in the statement. The best tradesmen I have known spent the first part of their apprenticeship knocking about the workshop, fetching and carrying for others, and unconsciously receiving impressions and gaining knowledge. The worst I have ever known were one or two whom the foreman thought, when they entered on their apprenticeship, to be too old for him to put to such work, and who were chained to the bench right away.

In an institution where it is undertaken to teach lads or men trades, not only are the conditions less favourable than those outside, but they are actually opposed to them. In fact, you have a company composed almost entirely of apprentices. There are no journeymen. There is only a foreman in the shape of the instructor; and as the longer he is there the more out of touch he is with the changes in method that have taken place amongst his fellow-tradesmen outside, he is only capable of telling his apprentices how he would do the thing, which in a workshop they might do better by following a plan more suitable to them. If he has to overlook their work they cannot be overlooking his; and while he is criticising their efforts and keeping them in order he cannot be showing them an example.

Every tradesman and every employer knows that it is an important question, not only whether a man has served his apprenticeship, but where he has served it. Of course, under the most favourable conditions some men do not become good tradesmen; they may have gone to the wrong occupation for them; but there are conditions that are generally more favourable than others for the production of capable workmen, and these conditions cannot possibly exist in an institution. Exceptions trained there may turn out passable workmen and may find work outside, but the result of trying to teach trades in an institution will be that at considerable expense you will increase the number of bad tradesmen; and there are plenty.

I do not say that nothing can be taught in an institution. Many things are learned there. The whole point is that they are not the things that make for efficiency outside.

It is easily seen how a man who has not himself been trained in a handicraft may believe that it can be taught as well in one place as another, although if you consider his own occupation and suggest that his profession too might be taught anywhere, he will readily see objections. The people who are notably interested in prison reform are largely drawn from the professional classes and from the well-to-do. It may be quite possible to teach a prisoner or the inmate of a reformatory to acquire the habits and the manners of an independent gentleman. Of the feasibility of the proposal, were it ever made, I am not qualified to speak; but, as an observer, one cannot help seeing that many of them have already acquired the habit of doing as little useful work for themselves as possible, and of expending a good deal of energy in directions that are not socially productive. The clergyman would reject as impracticable any proposal to train the reformed in an institution for entry into his profession; and yet abundance of quiet and of time for study could be obtained there, and there does not seem to be anything to hinder the teaching of theology, of literature, or of philosophy, from taking place within its walls.

There is, of course, the question of brains. It is a great mistake to assume that brains are the monopoly of any class, or that they play a more prominent part in the work of professional men than in that of others. So far as the training is concerned, there is no ground for assuming that selected inmates of reformatory institutions could not be had who are as well qualified by natural endowments to receive instruction of an academic character, in as large numbers, as others who would be fitted to receive instruction in the working of wood or of metal. Of course there are other reasons why ministers should not be trained in prison. There is the question of moral character; and though reformed desperadoes have become noble beings before now, I do not think that even the most enthusiastic evangelist would consider it safe to assume that a man who has failed to conform to the laws of the community is a safe person to train for the ministry.

This question of character would not be so generally admitted against any proposal to train the inmates of a reformatory institution as lawyers; but although a man might acquire all the useful information and general knowledge that are required for examination as a preliminary to admit him to the study of the laws of his country; although he might master the text-books and become learned in the records of legal decisions quite as well in a prison as in a lodging outside; no lawyer would admit that thereby he could qualify to practise his profession. He would insist that there is something more required in his experience than the mere knowledge of the laws and of case-books. Being a lawyer, he could set out at length what that something is.

So there is something that marks off the man who has been trained under the artificial conditions which exist in an institution from the man who has been trained outside. I knew of a blacksmith who was a very useful tradesman while he remained in the institution where he had learned that trade. He obtained work outside on several occasions, but he lost it always, not through any misconduct on his part, but through sheer inefficiency. Some things he could do, but most things he could not do; and his employers found him an unprofitable servant, partly because of his limitations and partly because his methods impaired the efficiency of those with whom he worked. In my day I have served an apprenticeship both to a handicraft and to medicine, and I have no doubt whatever that it would have been as easy for me to train for my medical qualification in prison as to have qualified myself as an artisan in an institution.