[2]. The select committee consisted of the Duke of Marlborough, Marquis of Salisbury, Lord Steward, Earl of Carnarvon, (who was elected Lord President,) Earl of Malmsebury, Earl of Romney, Earl Cathcart, Earl of Ducie, Earl of Dudley, Viscount Eversley, Lord Wodehouse, Lord Lyvedon, Duke of Richmond, Lord Wensleydale.
Of the five hundred and twelve folio pages of these Reports, there is not one that is without interest to every active member of this Society. There are 5,337 questions propounded by the various members of the commission, and answers rendered by those who have been in the administration of the prisons, or who had been exercising the duties of visitors, inspectors, physicians, &c., of the several prisons; and those answers present a most minute exhibit of the exact state of the prisons, and all that relates to their administration.
In some of the prisons, we find that there is a physician employed at seventy-five dollars a year, and that he visits twice a week.
So far as we have examined the Dietary of the different prisons in Great Britain and Ireland, we find some meals enriched with meat, in England, but none, as far as we discover, in Ireland. Prisoners are weighed, and their provisions augmented or improved, or diminished in quantity and quality, according as their weight increases or decreases. And the kind of labor is changed to suit their health and weight. They must require much personal supervision. Ale, wine and brandy are used in the prisons, when the prisoner is under medical treatment; and it would seem, from some Reports, that medical treatment was more frequently called for in the prisons where such indulgences are prescribed. It may be remarked here, also, that consideration is given to the previous habits, and pursuits of prisoners, when they enter, and the diet, with regard to meat and ale, somewhat modified by the amount which had been used before conviction.
The Committee are decided in their views of the necessity of uniformity in discipline, dress and food, in the prisons of Great Britain; and as, geographically considered, the kingdom is small, with little variety of climate or produce, such a desideratum may be easily supplied. We cannot hope for anything like an attempt at uniformity in our Federal Government; but there appears no immovable obstacle to a uniform system of prison discipline and practice in this State. But that cannot be hoped for, till there is a general knowledge of its wants. This will probably be the result of the establishment generally in this State of County Societies, auxiliary to the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons.
One spirit pervades all the Reports of the Noble Committee, and it is aroused and sustained by the answers to questions propounded by them to the Inspectors and other officers appointed to look after the economy and discipline of the prisons of all kinds throughout the kingdom, and that is the entire necessity of the separate confinement of the convicts, and the full belief that the same kind of treatment would be beneficial, so far as time would permit, for every class of prisoners. They distinguish between solitary and separate confinement. The former is recommended as a prison punishment,—the latter as a system of regular treatment. On this subject the Committee say, as a result of the testimony taken before them: “Where separate confinement exists, it exercises both a reformatory and deterrent effect. The committee are of opinion that the principle of separation should be made to pervade the entire system of the prison.” And while they do not admit that the adoption of the system need cause any relaxation of the rule in school or chapel, and at exercise, they intimate that the “cellular instruction” (as they denominate what we have in our Report spoken of as religious and moral instruction in and at the door of the cells) should not be relaxed.
It will be understood that the attempts at separate confinement in England have, in some places, been made by an effort to accommodate the old borough and county prisons to the new system. Poor as the chance of success might appear, it is worthy of remark, that the results satisfy both the Inspectors and the Noble Committee, that it is the true system of penal and reformatory imprisonment. On that subject the Committee say they “consider that the system generally known as the separate system must now be accepted as the foundation of prison discipline, and that its rigid maintenance is a vital principle in the efficiency of county and borough jails.”
This sentiment pervades the whole Report, and is suggested and sustained by the testimony of all those who were under examination before the Committee.
It is a subject of regret that we cannot copy at length the testimony of some of the witnesses called before the Committee of the House of Lords: we however find one question, with an answer thereto, that is too direct to be omitted.
1757. Question by the Earl of Carnarvon.