A great change has taken place in the system of labour both in Convict and Local Prisons during the last twenty-five years. In Convict Prisons this change is due, not, as in Local Prisons, to a different policy or to changes in the law, but to the fact that not only has there been a great reduction in the number of persons sentenced to Penal Servitude, but the opportunity for employment on what was known generally as "Public Works," e.g., the excavations at Chatham, the breakwater at Portland, the Dockyard extension at Portsmouth, the Forts at Borstal, has largely disappeared. Such Works in the early days of the English Convict system greatly facilitated the purpose of the Administration by affording means for carrying into effect the object of a sentence of Penal Servitude, which was to create a deterrent effect on the prisoner himself by the execution of a hard day's work, to develop his intelligence by his employment on interesting and productive labour and to give facilities for acquiring a knowledge of all those trades which the construction of such Works involved. Moreover, having regard to the valuable character of the Works referred to, it was possible in those days largely to recoup the cost of maintaining the Prisons. Thus the value of the labour of convicts at Portland, Portsmouth, Chatham and Borstal during the year 1880-1 amounted to £124,000, exclusive of the value of what is known as the domestic service of Prisons, such as baking, cooking, washing, &c., while the cost of maintaining those Prisons in the same year was £147,000. It has never at any time been regarded as an axiom in this country, however, that all prison labour should be remunerative or that the primary object of a Prison was to make it self-supporting, and for this reason, in those Prisons controlled by the Government, (that is Convict Prisons only prior to the Prison Act of 1877), the principle of competition with free labour was not admitted on such a scale that reasonable ground of complaint could arise as to undue interference with the outside market. The "Contract" system by which goods are manufactured for outside firms with the use of machinery, or under the supervision of the agents of those firms, is unknown in English State Prisons; and from early days to the present time, there has been no change of policy in this respect. The largest prison in the country, Wormwood Scrubs, was built entirely by convict labour, between 1874 and 1890. It has cellular accommodation for 1418 prisoners. Most of the bricks were made by prison labour on an adjacent site leased for the purpose. The massive blocks of stone used for the chapel, gate, and other buildings were quarried by convicts at Portland and Dartmoor: iron castings were prepared at Chatham and Portland. The average cost per cell was £70. 7. 0, as compared with a mean rate of £164 per cell paid to contractors elsewhere. Although no Public Works of importance have been undertaken for many years, the constant reconstruction of, and other works in connection with, the Convict Prisons of Aylesbury, Portland, Dartmoor, and Parkhurst have continued to engage a large percentage of the labour at the disposal of the Authorities. Thus of the value of the labour performed in Convict Prisons during 1912-13—a total of £63,000—more than half was in connection with building and quarrying work, the rest being divided between manufactures, farm and domestic service in the proportion of £16,000, £5,000, and £9,000 respectively. Apart from the fall in the numbers of the convict population, which now represents not more than a daily average of 1,500 persons, (whereas in the period of Public Works, strictly so called, to which I have referred, it was about 10,000) there has been a remarkable change in the physique and personnel of persons sentenced to penal servitude. From a medical census of the inmates of Convict Prisons taken in 1881, no less than three-fourths of the convicts were fit for hard labour of any kind, while only about one-thirtieth, or rather more than three per cent., were deemed unfit for any labour. An intermediate group of about twenty-one per cent. were returned as fit for the lighter forms of labour. A medical census of Convict Prisons taken in 1898 shows that only fifty-six per cent. were fit for hard labour, while seven per cent. were unfit for any labour and thirty-seven per cent. fit only for light labour. The days are, therefore, past when Public Works can be undertaken by large bodies of convicts either at the place of detention itself or by transfer to other localities for this special purpose. The last Public Work of this nature contemplated by the Government was the building of the new harbour at Dover; but though the plan advanced so far that a special prison was actually built at Dover for the location of the necessary number of convicts, the idea was not proceeded with chiefly on account of the great delay and slowness of building operations which is inseparable from the employment of convict labour. The result is that with the exception of quarrying stone, which is still a distinctive feature of the convict labour at Portland and Dartmoor, and reclaiming land for farming purposes (Dartmoor and Parkhurst), the character of the labour in Convict Prisons is more and more approximating to that in Local Prisons. Thus, if we compare the work carried on at the Local Prison of Wormwood Scrubs and at Parkhurst at the present time, we should find that much of the work was practically the same for those undergoing the longer sentences, e.g., a considerable number at each Prison would be employed as tailors, smiths and fitters, shoemakers, bricklayers, labourers and carpenters. In Convict Prisons, however, there was till recently no cellular labour, and the hours of labour and the whole system of Administration were adapted to the principle of outdoor associated labour. Now that the quarries employ a continuously diminishing number, the system of labour in both Convict and Local Prisons will be more and more assimilated.
Labour in Local Prisons has quite a different history. These Prisons did not come under Government control till 1878. The want of uniformity in their management, leading to an inequality of punishment in different parts of the country, was one of the principal arguments used for the centralization of all Prisons in the hands of the State; and it was specially marked in the matter of Prison labour. The Parliamentary inquiry of 1863, which led to the passing of the Prison Act 1865, while Local Prisons were still under the control of the Local Authorities, laid great stress on this point. In some Prisons, there was complete idleness: in some, unregulated association: in some an active industry conducted with a view to commercial profit: and, in some, a close and melancholy adherence to the rule of separate confinement and its concomitant hard labour. Although, as before stated, the phrase "hard labour" was adopted in Acts of Parliament since the middle of the 18th century, its meaning has never been accurately defined, and there was consequently a great variety in its application. The Prison Act of 1865 attempted to define it, and enacted that hard labour was to be of two classes. First Class,—mainly treadmill, shot drill, crank, capstan, stonebreaking, to which every male prisoner of the age of sixteen and upwards, sentenced to hard labour, was required to be kept for at least three months and might be kept for the whole of his sentence. Any other approved kind of labour was called Second Class. This meant practically all forms of prison employment exclusive of the special forms of penal labour prescribed for the First Class. When the prisons were taken over by the Government under the Act of 1877 it was found that at some Prisons, e.g. Winchester, practically the whole of the population were employed in pumping, grinding and oakum picking. At Oxford, the treadmill, shot drill and capstan were the order of the day. At Devizes, sixty-two out of seventy-eight prisoners were engaged on the treadmill or on oakum picking. At other Prisons the question of providing remunerative employment received the keenest attention. One Prison competed with another in finding a market for its produce. Governors and Officers were encouraged to take an active interest in trade by bonuses or other payments and the amount of trade profit was taken largely into account by the Magistrates in dealing with applications for increase of pay. At Wakefield an extensive mat trade was carried on in which the sale averaged £40,000 a year. Steam-power was employed. A commercial traveller was appointed to sell the goods, and the whole of the industrial department of the prison was under the control of a trade manager, who was provided with a staff of clerks and trade instructors. The salaries of all those officers were paid out of the trade profits. The trade manager had authority to award a gratuity not exceeding half-a-crown to any prisoner on his discharge who had shown special assiduity in the performance of his work, and the Governor could supplement this to the extent of 17s. 6d., making it one pound in all. It was in the power of the trade manager also to recommend the grant of additional bread as a reward for marked industry. Diligent long-term prisoners on their discharge were frequently provided for in the way of clothes, and had their railway fares paid to their destination. Cases have even been known of mutton chops being allowed at Christmas time to exceptionally industrious men. Preston Prison was another busy prison. It carried on a large trade, employed a commercial traveller, and the Governor was allowed a trade agent at a salary of £60 per annum. A taskmaster and assistant taskmaster also formed part of his staff. The regulations provided that "with a view to encourage habits of industry as well as to reward the honest efforts of prisoners, and to enable such as desired to reform to have the means of living after discharge until they can procure employment," the Governor should be empowered to grant a sum of two shillings to every prisoner who had performed his fixed task diligently and well during the whole period of his sentence (being not less than three months) and a further sum not exceeding two pounds for all work done in addition to such fixed task. The allowances were:—for an extra square yard of matting, 1d.; for an extra ton of stone breaking, 2d.; for every extra coat made, 2s.; for every extra pair of boots, 9d.; and so on. The same system prevailed at Bodmin, Bedford, Chester, Mold, Chelmsford, Maidstone, Coldbath Fields, Holloway, Lewes, and Warwick. Manchester had an agent paid by commission for the purchase of stores, and the sale of manufactured articles. The Governor of Hereford received ten per cent. on the net profits arising from the sale of the manufactured goods, and the assistant turnkey had an extra allowance of three shillings a week for acting as trade instructor. Then Kirkdale, Strangeways, Leeds, Lewes, and many other prisons were furnished, in addition to the ordinary disciplinary staff, with trade officers, whose duty it was to instruct the prisoners in the various industries carried on.
All this was altered when the Government assumed the complete control of all Local prisons in England and Wales on the 1st of April 1878.
In connection with the strict and uniform system of discipline which was introduced into every department of the Service, the granting of allowances to officers and the payment of rewards to prisoners were abolished, and in lieu of these rewards, the gratuity system, which is explained in another chapter, was introduced. The actual industries on which prisoners were employed remained much the same, except that, later on, matmaking, which had been one of the principal Prison industries, employing a daily average of nearly 3,000 workers, had to be almost abandoned in consequence of an agitation which had commenced in 1872 on the part of outside workmen, who complained that the competition of Prison labour was seriously affecting their trade. About this date, the oakum trade, on which the prisons throughout the country had been able to rely for employment for many generations, collapsed owing to the substitution of iron and steel for wood in the building of ships. This industry employed between 3,000 and 4,000 prisoners, mostly those under sentences then considered too short to admit of the teaching of any trade. At the same time, the Act of 1877 reduced the period of hard or penal labour to one month in the case of those sentenced to hard labour. A larger body of prisoners thus became eligible for the ordinary industrial employment of the Prison, but these employments were still carried on in separation, and it was not till twenty years later that the principle of associated labour in local prisons was recognized and adopted. The public inquiry of 1894 into Prison Administration was a practical condemnation of the separate or cellular system except for short periods. It swept aside the old-fashioned idea that separate confinement was desirable on the ground that it enables the prisoner to meditate on his misdeeds. It held that association for industrial labour under proper conditions could be productive of no harm, and this view was supported by the fact that association for work on a large scale had always been the practice at the Convict Prisons without being productive of dangerous outbreaks by prisoners who as a class were less easy to control than those in Local Prisons. At the same time the vexed question of competition with free labour was examined, and representatives of trade unions who appeared before the Committee, while admitting that industrial labour was morally and physically beneficial to prisoners, only urged that direct competition with outside labour should not be allowed at cutting prices. They only asked that goods should not be sold below the market price for the district or the standard price elsewhere, and that every consideration should be shown to the special circumstances of particular industries outside so as to avoid all undue interference with the wages and employment of free labour. The inquiry of 1894 marks a new starting point in the history of Prison labour in Local Prisons, and steps were at once taken to give effect to the leading recommendations of the Committee, which were broadly in favour of the abolition of all forms of unproductive labour, cranks, treadmills &c., and of a system of associated, in lieu of cellular, labour. The problems involved were costly and difficult and only slow progress could be made. The provision of workshops alone in Prisons built for the most part on the cellular plan and for strictly cellular purposes was a considerable undertaking. The abolition of cranks, treadmills, &c., involved the necessity of finding work which should be of an onerous and disagreeable character for prisoners during the first month. The collapse of the matmaking and oakum trades increased this difficulty. The form in which the labour statistics had hitherto been rendered was thoroughly revised and the out-of-date labour price list, which had previously been in use as the basis of valuation in Convict Prisons, was abolished and a new list brought into operation on the 1st April, 1897, applicable to both Convict and Local Prisons. The old-fashioned "per diem" rates which had previously obtained in Local Prisons and which often had no relation whatever to the amount of work done, giving rise to fallacious valuations, were replaced with what are called "per article" rates, the actual quantity of work performed being now the basis of valuation. The institution of the new rates in connection with the new scale of the tasks required of prisoners now enables accurate calculation to be made as to the exact degree of industrial output and efficiency at each Prison. At the same time, a scheme was introduced for the payment of special allowances to officers engaged in instructing prisoners. The effect of these changes became at once apparent, and by the year 1900, there was an increase of no less than thirty per cent. in the average earnings per prisoner, as compared with what was earned four years previously when the revision of manufacturing methods was first taken in hand, and in that year the entire value of the labour in all branches, manufactures, farms, building and domestic service showed an increase of nearly £10,000. It was at this time that the demolition of treadmills had begun to place at our disposal for workshop purposes the buildings in which the treadmill had hitherto been worked, and steps were taken for the development of work of a higher grade such as bookbinding, printing, carpentry, tinsmithing, shoemaking, and tailoring, which it was thought it would be possible to obtain by the friendly co-operation of the Government Departments requiring such articles. Hitherto the Government work undertaken had been more or less of a simple and non-technical character and this must, of course, in the main be looked to for the employment of the local prison population, consisting largely of prisoners with short sentences, many being sent to Prison for periods of a month or under. Only two or three per cent. are for periods of more than six months. In spite of these drawbacks, the progress resulting from the new organization has been remarkable. There is a great improvement in the value of the manufacturing output which in 1913-14, exceeded that of 1897 by no less than 88 per cent., and this has been achieved without entering into undue competition with private traders. The payment of trade allowances to carefully selected officers, though small in amount, has had a far reaching and stimulating effect. Not only do the officers take the keenest interest in their work, but the prisoners, now that they receive instruction in interesting trades, are year by year increasing their average earnings. It was estimated that the average earnings of a local prisoner in 1878, when the local prisons were taken over by the Government, was £5. 18. 0. In the year 1904, the average earnings per prisoner per annum reached £9. 18. 9. At this time the employment of local prisoners in associated labour was further extended: where shops were not available, they worked in the corridors, on the landings or at their cell doors for several hours daily: the numbers so employed, starting from comparatively low numbers in 1898, numbered more than 9,000 in 1911. The average number of prisoners for whom productive work is found represented in 1913-14 about eighty-six per cent. of the population, distributed as follows:—manufacturing department, 10,500: building, 1,700: prison service, 3,000: farm, 400.
By 1908, the average annual earnings per prisoner had increased to £13. 2. 0., and a gradual reduction had been made in the number engaged upon what are generally known as low-grade industries. A certain amount of unskilled and less remunerative labour is inevitable, owing to the short sentences of so many prisoners, and the physical inability of others. The work thus described consists of pea-sorting, bean-sorting, coir-balling, coir-picking, cotton-sorting, oakum-picking, rope-teasing, and wool-sorting. In 1908 about twenty-eight per cent. of the total number of prisoners under the Manufacturing Department were employed in this way. There was also a permanent non-effective strength, amounting to about sixteen per cent. This number represents prisoners under remand or awaiting trial, patients in prison hospitals, ill-conducted prisoners under punishment, and prisoners not told off for work pending medical examination, registration, &c.
The strong efforts made to increase the productivity of prison labour during the period which had elapsed since the daily round of crank and treadwheel was superseded by a rational system of tasked industrial labour obtained a marked success in 1911, in which year there was a record output of labour valued at over a quarter of a million pounds. In this year, the average annual earnings per prisoner rose to £14. 9. 4. This average has since increased to £15. 1. 0. in the year 1919-20. At the same time, there has been a decrease both of non-effective strength, which has fallen to 15 per cent. of prison population, and of the number employed on low-grade industries, which decreased to four per cent. last year. In 1910, satisfactory results became manifest from the development of female labour, the reorganization of which had been proceeding steadily throughout the country. By permitting women to proceed to associated labour at the commencement of their sentences, it was found possible to do much of the domestic service by prisoners with comparatively short sentences, thus freeing those undergoing longer periods for skilled labour, e.g., dress-making, needle-work, or other suitable occupation. Owing to the difficulty experienced during 1912-1913 in connection with the supply of materials for manufacturing purposes, consequent upon serious labour disputes throughout the world, there was a fall in that year in the aggregate earnings of prisoners, which still, however, continued high, thanks to the orders for skilled and unskilled work which are now placed at the disposal of the Authorities by the various Government Departments—the General Post Office, Admiralty, War Office, Office of Works, Stationery Office, &c. The sympathetic help of these Departments, on which we are now able to rely, furnishes a promising prospect for the present, and also for the development of other industries in the future.
On the outbreak of war, drastic steps were taken to secure a maximum output of war manufactures, e.g., the association of male prisoners during the first month of sentence; extended hours of labour; and optional employment on Sundays. The appeal which was made to the patriotism of the prisoners met with a splendid response, and, in spite of the large withdrawal of able-bodied men and women for national services, the average value of prison labour was nearly £9 per head greater than for the five years before the War. During the period of the War, over 20 million articles were supplied to various Government Departments.
The Great War has sadly impeded the development of the plan of industrial training in Borstal Institutions which was originally intended. Up-to-date modern workshops, plant and machinery have not yet been fully installed, owing both to lack of the necessary material, and to the shortage of labour caused by the enlistment of inmates after a comparatively short period of detention. Rapid steps are now being taken to make up for lost time: advantage has been taken of the opportunity offered by the sale of materials of all sorts by the Government Surplus Property Disposal Board to accumulate plant and machinery, and it is hoped that before long the opportunity will be given to intelligent lads to acquire a good elementary instruction in various technical trades, which will facilitate their disposal on discharge, and also instil, not only the habit, but the love of work—the absence of which is in most cases the beginning of the criminal career, born of idleness, and the example of bad early associations. In the meantime, good work of an instructional character has been forthcoming by the employment of lads in the various building operations, often necessary at Borstal and Feltham, and the trades of carpentry and smithing incidental thereto. There is also a considerable area for farming operations at both places, with the advantage of healthy outdoor life and hard manual labour. There is also a regular system of instruction in market-gardening; and the various forms of domestic service, cooking, baking, laundry, &c., and in the case of those more fitted for sedentary occupation, tailoring, bootmaking, &c.