IMPRISONMENT.
Under the Common Law all gaols belonged to the King and by 5 Henry 4. c. 10, it was enacted that none should be imprisoned by any justice of the peace, but only in the "Common Gaol," saving the franchises of those who have gaols. Except in special cases the gaols were under the control of the sheriff, but the gaols which great noblemen and bishops were allowed to maintain must have been governed by these dignitaries, while the gaols which towns, liberties, or other bodies, having no sheriffs, were empowered by charter or otherwise to keep, must have been under the governing authorities of those bodies. By the 39th Eliz., another place of imprisonment was established for certain classes of offenders, under the name of "House of Correction," and 7 James 1. c. 4, directs that, in every county, such a house should be established, and means provided for setting rogues and idle persons to work. These establishments were under the justices. The custom gradually grew up of committing criminals of all classes to Houses of Correction, and was legalized by 6 Geo. 1. c. 19 and 5 & 6 Will. 4. c. 38. s. 3, by which latter Act even sentence of death might be carried out at these places; but debtors could still be committed only to the Gaol and vagrants only to the House of Correction; and though it became common to unite the two buildings under one roof, with one governing staff, the two superior jurisdictions of the sheriff and the justices over what was virtually one establishment were still maintained.
The title "House of Correction" was subsequently abolished by the Prison Act, 1865, and since that date "Local Prison" has been the official designation of the place of detention of persons sentenced to imprisonment. A "Convict Prison" is a place of detention for a person sentenced to penal servitude. There are fifty-six Local Prisons in which sentences of imprisonment are served, (though 14 have been temporarily closed during the war). They vary in size, from the large Local Prisons in London, Manchester and Liverpool, with an average population of 1,000 or more, to the small prisons in country districts with a daily average of less than 100. By the Prison Act of 1877, the entire management of these prisons was transferred from the various local jurisdictions to the State, and the cost incidental to their maintenance from the local rates to the Imperial Exchequer. They are vested in the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and are administered, subject to his approval, by a body of Commissioners appointed by the Crown.
Although by Common Law imprisonment only involves deprivation of liberty, yet by a series of statutes extending from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present day, the nature and methods of imprisonment have undergone successive modification. These I propose to trace shortly, so that the present system of imprisonment, in its two principal forms—"with," and "without hard labour"—may be understood. There is probably no legal phrase so imperfectly understood, or which in its application has been so embarrassing to the administration, or which has to a greater extent misled the Courts of law in assigning punishment, as the phrase "hard labour." By its comparison with the French "travaux forcés" it has created an impression in foreign countries that it is a very severe penalty, applied only for the greatest crimes; at home it obscures the principle that in prison all labour is hard, i.e., that all prisoners are punished with an equal prescribed task, whether they be sentenced to imprisonment with or without hard labour: and in penal servitude, where the manual labour is of the hardest, the phrase has no legal existence.
The reform of the English Prison System originated towards the end of the eighteenth century with the public exposure made by the great Howard on the deplorable condition of our gaols, and his statue in St. Paul's Cathedral fitly commemorates the gratitude of his country for the services he rendered to humanity. The story of his life is well known: how, being seized by a French privateer on his way to Lisbon in 1755, he was thrown into a dungeon at Brest, and so had personal experience of the horrors of imprisonment: how in 1773 the duties of his office as High Sheriff of the County of Bedford led him to inquire into the state of Prisons in England and Wales: how in 1774 he was examined by the House of Commons on the subject, and had the honour of receiving the thanks of that Body: how he devoted his later life to the inspection of prisons at home and abroad until his celebrated work on the "State of Prisons," published modestly at his own expense in a provincial town, awakened the public conscience to all the horrors of imprisonment; how, owing to his influence, not only statesmen, lawyers, and philosophers, but all the uninstructed public opinion of the day, now, for the first time, began to realize that the whole penal system was a scandal and a disgrace.
The Prison Act of 1778 is the beginning of the English Prison System. This measure, the result of the joint labours of Mr. Howard, Sir William Blackstone, and Mr. Eden, was due, not only to the newly-awakened interest in the treatment of prisoners, but to the political necessity for making provision for keeping our prisoners at home, which had resulted from the loss of the American Colonies. In this Act the principle of separate confinement with labour, and of religious and moral instruction, is clearly laid down and enforced. In the year 1781, a further Act was passed, making it compulsory for Justices to provide separate accommodation for all persons convicted of felony who were committed for punishment with hard labour, it being recited in the preamble to the Act that in the absence of such provision "persons sentenced for correction frequently grow more dissolute and abandoned during their continuance in such houses."
The principle of separate confinement having been thus recognized by Parliament, the Justices of some Counties, including Sussex and Gloucester, respectively, started the local prisons of Horsham, Petworth, and Gloucester, on the separate plan, and they furnish interesting historical record of the formal adoption in this country of a system which, a few years later, under American influences, became generalized throughout the civilized world.