80. “In effect, this is the purpose which it must be regarded as now designed to serve. . . . It is certainly a practical convenience in the sense that the expense of sending convicts immediately after sentence to convict prisons, either singly or in small detachments, is curtailed by the system of gathering prisons. This consideration alone is not sufficient to justify the practice. The argument that it is a necessary discipline for penal servitude, if true, is no argument for sending the convicts to local prisons. We do not regard the system with favour. We see no objection to short periods of detention in local prisons for the purpose of collecting parties for transfer to the convict prisons; but if the system is a good one at all, we think it ought, as far as possible, to be worked out in the convict prisons from first to last. We think it cannot be denied that cases occur in which a nervous condition, agitated by remorse and by a long continuance of the separate system, may be injuriously affected by it. From the evidence before us, we have no reason to believe that such cases are of other than exceptional occurrence. We think it is worth considering whether the severity of the system might not be mitigated by a substantial reduction in the period of separation. . . .”
These, sir, were the conclusions of your Committee as far back as 1895. I submit that, as a whole, they point to the existence of very grave doubts in the minds of its members as to the wisdom of retaining this system of closed-cell confinement at all. Since then great strides have been made in the direction of the classification of prisoners, and of associated labour, and the whole slow trend of thought and effort in regard to prisons has been in the direction of reformation of the prisoner.
The late Sir Edmund Du Cane, though one of its chief supporters, has called solitary confinement “. . . an artificial state of existence absolutely opposed to that which Nature points out as the condition of mental, moral, and physical health . . .” (“The Punishment and Prevention of Crime,” p. 138.) Its effect on a highly-strung temperament is thus described by a young woman who had served a long term of penal servitude.
“. . . It is like nothing else in the world—it is impossible to describe it; no words can paint its miseries, nothing that I can say would give any idea of the horrors of solitary confinement—it maddens one even to think of it. No one who has not been through it can conceive the awful anguish one endures when shut up in a living tomb, thrown back upon yourself . . . The overpowering sensation is one of suffocation. You feel you must and can smash the walls, burst open the doors, kill yourself! . . .”
Add to this Sir Robert Anderson’s description of his sensations (Nineteenth Century, March, 1902), after he had caused himself to be locked up for only a few hours with a political prisoner. “I seemed to be in a pit. There was no want of air, and yet I felt smothered. My nerves would not have long stood the strain of it.”
This is the conclusion, from personal experience, of H. B. Montgomery:
“The whole of this procedure” (solitary confinement) “is cruel and barbarous, unworthy of a humane or civilized nation. To my knowledge it drives many men mad, and even when it does not induce lunacy, mentally affects a large proportion of those subjected to it . . .” And: “The less a prisoner is thrown in on himself and the more he is encouraged to foster his home ties, the less likely is he to descend into that condition of despair and demoralization which are such potent factors in driving men to perdition.”
These are the words of Colonel Baker, of the Salvation Army, before your Departmental Committee of 1895:
“As to convicts on discharge, I should like to say that we find a great number of them incapable of pursuing any ordinary occupation. They are mentally weak and wasted, requiring careful treatment for months after they have been received by us. In several cases they are men who are only fit to be sent off home or to a hospital.”
These, after personal experience, are the comments of W. B. N. in his moderate, and stoical, book “Penal Servitude”: