Known to the Police

by Thomas Holmes

Prisoners' Aid Societies have an impossible task when they attempt to reform these young men. They are heavily handicapped from the start, inasmuch as they cannot enforce discipline even in a Labour Home; neither can they compel continuity of work; neither can they secure regular employment for any that might be inclined to perseverance and industry. No Prisoners' Aid Society can do this, and it would be well for everybody concerned if this fact were honestly admitted and the truth fairly faced. In justice to many of the societies, it is only fair to say that they freely admit that they have nothing to offer to those that have been several times convicted.

During 1906, 10,700 men and women, each of whom had already been in prison more than twenty times, were again received into the local prisons of England and Wales.

Think of it. In one year only, and that the very last year for which criminal statistics are available, 10,700 men and women who had been committed to prison more than twenty times each were again sent to prison in England and Wales alone!

These official figures not only bring a grave indictment against our prison system, but they also serve to show the inability of Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies to deal with the bulk of discharged prisoners in ways that can be called satisfactory. The fault does not lie with the societies, for they are all animated with an earnest desire to help discharged prisoners. Every society that exists, and every individual member of every society, would be more than delighted—they would be thankful to God—if they could in some effectual way help every discharged prisoner. But they cannot. The difficulties are too great, too stupendous. Of a truth, they have no work to offer discharged prisoners; for they cannot create work at will, neither can they produce from some mysterious and inexhaustible store situations to suit the varying capabilities of ex-prisoners.

Social conditions are dead against the work of these societies, though the sympathy—that is, the abstract sympathy—of the public is with them. For every situation that is vacant, or likely to be vacant, where skill and experience are not required, a hundred honest men are waiting—waiting to fight each other for a remote chance of getting it. Employers will not hold situations in abeyance till some Prisoners' Aid Society can supply them with a doubtful servant. They would act foolishly—I might say wickedly—if they did. Again I say—for I would have this fact emphasized—no organization, be it large or small, can offer situations to discharged prisoners. Certain things they can do. But what avails intermittent wood-chopping? Of what use is casual bill-distributing? Can an irregular supply of envelope-addressing, continued for a few weeks, be considered work? Paper and rag sorting, and the carrying of advertising boards at intervals, must not be dignified by the word "work." All these things are useful to a limited extent and to a certain class. They suit those men, and those men only, who have no desire for the discipline of real work, by which I mean regular and continuous labour. Any discharged prisoner who possesses a fair amount of health and strength and an atom of grit stands a much better chance when he relies upon himself than when he seeks the aid of an organization; for life in a Labour Home does not procure him, or help him to procure, honest and continuous work. Even a lengthened stay in a Labour Home leaves him in the same position as when he left prison. Relying on himself, an ex-prisoner can take his chance among the hundred who are scrambling or fighting for the coveted job; and if his health and appearance are satisfactory, he is as likely to get it as any other man. But even though a large number of discharged prisoners enter Labour Homes, the managers have no power to compel them either to work or remain in the home. As a consequence, the majority depart in a very short time, preferring liberty and semi-starvation to the non-compulsory restraint of the home. So they pass into freedom, glorious freedom! Free, but with no desire, and with very little chance, of doing right; free, with little desire and no ability to live by honest labour. Freedom to them means liberty or licence to do wrong, and only serves to give them opportunities of getting once more into prison.

It follows, then, as a matter of course, that Aid Societies concern themselves, and rightly concern themselves, with first-time prisoners. They are younger; they are not so hopeless; they stand a much better chance in the labour world; they have not been so often through the deadening mill of prison. All these things are true, but with all these things in their favour, only a very limited amount of success is obtained in the reformation of first-time prisoners. The reasons are obvious. First, no society has the power to enforce any discipline or impose any restraint upon them; secondly, no society can procure, even for young ex-prisoners, continuous and progressive employment. I know the difficulties, and something of the anxieties that societies experience in this direction, for I have shared them. Honesty is essential even for porters, vanmen and milkmen. The choice of occupation for ex-prisoners under twenty-one is very limited. The pick and shovel are of no use to them. Trades they have none. Clerkships are out of the question. Positions—even humble positions—of trust are not for them. Too old for boys' work, yet not fitted for men's, although first-time prisoners, they are in a difficult position. So are those who try to help them. "Send them to sea!" Well, we are a nation of sailors, but those who go down to the sea in ships do so of their own choice. For them the sea has an attraction; they love it—or they think they love it when they enter on the life. But all English youths do not love the sea; neither are all fitted for a sailor's life.

But supposing the sea be decided upon, in what capacity are they to go? They cannot go as sailors, nor yet as apprentices; neither can they go as stewards or cooks. The difficulty of sending them to sea is scarcely less than that of finding them occupation ashore. Numbers of them are put on coasting vessels, it is true; but this course is certain to fail—and it does fail. Their first voyage, in sight of land all the time, may last a week—maybe a fortnight. At the end of the voyage they are paid off at the port where the ship discharges its cargo. During the time aboard they have had a rough time. The voyage has lasted long enough to make them heartily and bodily sick of the sea; but it has not lasted long enough to inure them to the life and give them a liking for it, while the comfort aboard a "collier" makes them sigh for the comforts of prison. If not paid off at the first port, a good many youths, to use their own expression, "can't stick it," so they "bunk" at the first opportunity. Still, they have been "sent to sea," and figure accordingly in the published report and statistics. This course is, I contend, unfair even to discharged prisoners. It is not only a foredoomed failure, but it lands youths in positions where they are certain to get into mischief. Some of them tramp back to London, after having sold their "kit," which had been bought for them out of their prison earnings. No; it is idle to suppose that youths who have been subject to no discipline other than that of prison will be reformed and induced to work steadily and persistently by a few days' unpleasant experience on a coasting vessel.

Quite recently a strong youth came to see me. I had met him in prison, where the Governor quite wisely had him trained for a ship's cook. He had behaved well in prison and obtained all his marks, and his sentence was long enough to allow him to earn a substantial gratuity. This was spent by an agent of a society in buying a very meagre outfit and a railway-ticket to Hull. The youth supposed that he was going to have a berth on an ocean-going steamer, but no such berth was forthcoming. Ultimately he was shipped aboard a small coaster with a cargo of coals for Southend. At the end of seventeen days he was paid off at Southend. By arrangement, he was to receive 30s. per month for his services, and should therefore have received at least 17s. He was considerably surprised to find that only 9s. was forthcoming, the skipper telling him, and producing a document to that effect, that there was a lien upon his first wages of 8s. for a "shipping fee" which he, the skipper, had paid to the man who introduced him. He stayed in Southend for a short time looking for another berth, for his discharge-note was in order, and his conduct appears to have been satisfactory. But berths are not to be had at Southend, so with his last money he paid his fare to London, where he landed penniless. This custom of paying "hangers-on" at the docks of large seaports a sum of money for "shipping" youths prevails largely, and a most unsatisfactory practice it is. I have personally known several men engaged in what is termed rescue work resort largely to this method of getting rid of responsibilities they themselves have undertaken, and which they ought to bear, or honestly say at the outset that they cannot undertake them. The fact is that prison youths are not wanted even at sea, or, if they are, it is under such circumstances that the hope of their doing any good for themselves must be abandoned. "Send them to sea" has too long been a catchword. Whether it ever did cure youths of idleness and dishonesty I am doubtful, but I am certain, at any rate, that it does not at the present time act as the grand specific.

The navy will not accept prison youths; the mercantile marine will have none of them, and short coasting voyages are worse than useless; for honesty and industry are estimable qualities even at sea. It would be well indeed if all Prisoners' Aid Societies and all those engaged in similar work would plainly and unmistakably state the difficulties they experience when called on to find situations or employment for discharged prisoners, be they young, middle-aged, or old; well for the discharged prisoners themselves to know the truth at once, rather than that they should go on calling day after day at any office, and waiting hour after hour among many others to see if anything has "come in," for nothing with the least resemblance to regular work can "come in" well, too, for the public if they could understand the difficulties under which societies labour, and the difficulties which ex-prisoners have to face. Better still would it be for our authorities to clearly understand these matters, for then surely more effectual methods would be found for dealing with those who, either from incapacity, desire, or social circumstances, appear quite willing to spend their days in prison. With the older prisoners I am not now concerned, for the Home Secretary and his advisers fully recognize that for them new methods must be tried, and their Bill now before Parliament makes it sufficiently evident; but why not begin with them earlier in life? Surely, if the fact of an elderly man having been committed four times on indictment is sufficient to stamp him as "habitual," for whom a more drastic treatment must be provided, then the fact of a youth or young man under twenty-five having been in prison an equal number of times, coupled with the fact that he is homeless and workless, ought to be quite sufficient to ensure him a long period of useful discipline in some place other than prison. By some such means the supply of young criminals, that at present seems inexhaustible, would be stopped, and the difficulty with regard to older criminals would almost vanish. And pity demands it, for the bulk of these young men have had but little chance in life. Birth and environment have been against them; of home life in its full sense they have known nothing; to discipline they have been strangers, and they are a product of our present civilization. Can we expect them to exhibit the rarer qualities of human nature? Temptation is, I know, no respecter of persons, for not seldom do young men of good parentage and splendid environment fail; but to the young of whom I write temptation is as nothing, for they do not understand the beauty of moral worth, the dignity of man, and the virtue of honest labour. For the future they care nothing; they live in the present, content to be idle. To eat, to sleep, to enjoy themselves in an animal way, is their idea of life. Their wits are only sharpened to deceive. To get the better—or, as they put it, "to best"—others is their one aim, and a shilling obtained by the "besting" process is worth ten obtained by honest work.