In order that the whole-time staff of the prison medical service should be kept fully acquainted with modern developments in medicine and surgery, a system of "study-leave" was inaugurated in 1909, whereby a certain number each year take up a post-graduate course at the large hospitals. Special leave is allowed for the purpose, and the Commissioners pay the fees. Each officer chooses his own course of study, subject to the approval of the Medical Commissioner, due regard being paid to the special requirements of the prison service.
The nursing of sick prisoners is carried out by officers of the hospital staff, except in the smaller prisons where, for the present, outside nurses are engaged. The male officers are selected from candidates who have had nursing experience in the Royal Army Medical Corps or in Institutions, and they undergo a course of training in prison nursing and hospital duties at the invalid convict station at Parkhurst, Isle of Wight, before appointment to the hospital staff. As regards the female officers, these have, in the past, been officers trained in the larger female prison hospitals, but the question of securing more fully trained nurses for female prisons is now under consideration. With this object in view, a Voluntary Advisory Nursing Board has been established consisting, for the most part, of distinguished members of the medical and nursing professions to advise the Commissioners in formulating a scheme for a prison nursing scheme, and the Board will, it is hoped, be a useful auxiliary to the administration for this purpose in the future.
A CRIMINOLOGICAL INQUIRY IN ENGLISH PRISONS.
An attempt has lately been made in this country to apply scientific method to the study of criminal man. A vast amount of data relating to the personal condition, social estate, and penal histories of "convicts" (i.e., men sentenced to penal servitude for three years and upwards) has been co-ordinated and amplified by physical measurements, by details of personal and family history, and by description of physical and mental qualities. An examination in respect of all or some of these points of 3,000 men, taken without selection from those undergoing penal servitude in English Convict Prisons, has formed the basis of this inquiry.
Of this large number of sets of observations, which were made by the Medical Officers of the Convict Prisons, Dr. Goring contributed considerably more than half, and to him was entrusted the onerous task of tabulating the material of the whole. With the assistance and advice of Professor Karl Pearson, Dr. Goring was enabled to carry out this work which he has achieved with remarkable patience and ability. The main intention of this investigation at the outset was to obtain accurate information whereby the many hypotheses advanced by different schools of criminology, and especially the Italian Schools, might be confirmed or refuted. But the scope of the work grew, perhaps inevitably, beyond its original purpose, and now includes not only an analysis of the physical and mental condition of convicts, but also many data for speculations on very difficult and contentious questions as to the relative influence of "heredity," "environment," &c., on the genesis of 'criminals' generally.
Dr. Goring's complete and elaborate Report, entitled "The English Convict—a Statistical Study," has been published by the Government in an official Blue-Book. It appears now as Dr. Goring's own work, carried out by a special method, and the conclusions arrived at are his own. I do not propose to attempt to criticise either his method or his conclusions, being aware that such an attempt would involve discussion of some matters on which there is much difference of scientific opinion.
This work is, as far as I know, the first essay made in any country to arrive at results on criminology by the strict application of what is known as the biometrical method of statistical treatment of recorded observations. Whatever its merits or demerits may be, it at least marks an epoch in the history of criminological studies. In the pages which follow, I endeavour to present in a more simple and popular form, and, as far as possible, in his own words, an abstract of Dr. Goring's views, and of the results to which his general inquiry has led him. Students of Criminology must turn to the original volume itself for a detailed exposition of the whole case which the author so ably presents.