Our criminal class costs the nation a prodigious sum. The prison population for England and Scotland is about 30,000, and the prison expenditure last year (1898) was £604,696, so that the cost annually to the country of each convict is about £20.
But there are indirect costs. If we put down:—
| Law courts at | £3,757,960. |
| Police at | 5,000,000. |
| Loss of property by depredation of criminals not less than | 1,000,000. |
| Total | £9,761,960. |
and add to this the cost of the prisons, we reach the frightful expenditure of over ten millions. Surely the nation is penny wise and pound foolish. If instead of spending so much to get men into prison, and keep them there, it would but concern itself with keeping them out, there would be a great reduction in cost.
The convict is not such an utter black sheep as we might be disposed to think him. That which forms the class is the sending back among their fellows men who have been in prison. They cannot get out of the association, and consequently they return again and again to their cells.
There is indeed a society for helping prisoners on leaving to get into situations, but this is a duty that should be undertaken by the nation; and very often the only way to really give a poor fellow a chance is to move him entirely away from this country. It is a difficult problem, and we could not, of course, send them to our colonies; but all social problems are difficult, yet should be faced, and there is a solution to be found somewhere.
All that the convict really requires is a certain amount of discipline, a strong hand, and a clear head in a leader or master, and he may yet be made a man of, useful to his fellows.
"You don't think I'm such a fool as to like it, do you?" said a convicted burglar to the chaplain. "I do it because I can't help myself. When I leave prison I have nowhere else to go but to my old pals and the old diggings."
If it could be contrived to give these fellows, after a first conviction, a start in a new country, nine out of ten might be reclaimed. They are like children, not wilfully given to evil, but incapable of self-restraint, and cowards among their fellows, whose opinions and persuasion they dare not oppose.
There is one institution connected with Dartmoor that must not be passed over—Bellever Day.