There is power also under the Probation of Offenders Act, 1907, for any Court (either Superior or Summary) to release an offender on probation—the former, in lieu of imposing a sentence of imprisonment, or in the case of the latter, without proceeding to conviction. The offender may be discharged conditionally on entering into recognizances to be of good behaviour, and to appear for sentence or conviction at any time within three years. The Court may, in addition, order the offender to pay damages for injuries, or compensation. A recognizance under this Act may contain a condition that the offender shall be placed under the supervision of a Probation Officer, and other conditions may be that he shall not associate with undesirable persons, and that he shall abstain from intoxicating liquors, and, generally, that he shall lead an industrious life. Details as to the operation of the law will be given in a subsequent chapter.
Previously to 1907, there was no Court of Criminal Appeal. The general principle had been that in criminal cases no appeal was allowed to either party on any question of fact; the only resource for a wrongfully convicted man was to petition the Secretary of State. A prisoner now has an absolute right to appeal on any question of law, and, if leave be obtained, on any question of mixed fact and law. He also has the right to appeal against the sentence passed on him. Neither the Crown's Prerogative of Mercy, nor the powers of the Home Secretary to institute such inquiry as he may think fit, are affected by the Act.
The penalty of death is now practically restricted to cases of murder, although permitted by law in the case of treason, and certain forms of piracy and arson. The average number of capital sentences for the last ten years has been 25, and of these, 13 suffered the extreme penalty of the law.
I propose to commence the Study of the English Prison System by a short survey of the history of Penal Servitude,—an essential preliminary to an understanding of the System as it exists to-day.
THE HISTORY OF PENAL SERVITUDE.
Penal Servitude was substituted for Transportation in the year 1853. It will be necessary to trace shortly the history of Transportation, so that the features of Penal Servitude, as they exist to-day, may be understood. Transportation is first mentioned as a punishment under an Act passed in the reign of Charles II, which empowered Judges to exile for life the moss-troopers of Northumberland to any of H.M. Possessions in America. It is stated that in the Bloody Assizes of 1685 Judge Jeffries sent no less than 841 persons to Transportation. It appears to have been the practice to subject these transported offenders to penal labour, and to employ them as slaves on the estates of the planters. An Act was passed in the reign of George I., giving to the persons who contracted to transport a property and interest in the service of such offenders. A great want of servants in the Colonies is one of the reasons assigned for this mode of punishment. In spite of this, however, many of the Colonies, especially Barbadoes, Maryland and New York, objected to having their wants supplied by these means, and with the War of Independence, transportation to America ceased.
It was about this time that, under the influence of Blackstone, Howard, and others, what was known later as the Penitentiary System for the treatment of Crime began to be considered in England, and an Act was passed in the year 1778 for the introduction into the Prison régime of the three factors on which the so-called Penitentiary System rested, viz:—separate confinement, hard labour, and instruction—secular and religious. Although the System was commenced in good earnest in a few places, e.g., Petworth and Gloucester, under the auspices of keen prison reformers (at these places, the Duke of Richmond and Sir G.O. Paul) it was not till some fifty years later that general interest was attracted by the experiments being made in the United States, where the rival Systems—"Cellular" and "Associated," as carried out at Philadelphia and Auburn, respectively, have become historical.