But I may be told that Parkhurst is an exceptional prison, and that it is intended chiefly for weaklings.
This is quite true, but it is beside the question; for the inhabitants of Parkhurst are convicts, men who have, as my list shows, committed serious crime; that they have been gathered from other prisoners goes to prove my point, viz., that physical causes which are evident demand attention to an infinitely greater degree than speculative and obscure causes that we cannot diagnose, and which, for all we know, may not exist.
But what obtains at Parkhurst exists in every other prison, unless it be a specialised prison such as Borstal in England, and Elmira in America.
Year after year in their annual report the Prison Commissioners tell us, and they are never tired of telling us, that our prisons are filled with the very poor, the very weak, the afflicted and the ignorant.
I could fill a volume with extracts from reports with such testimony; governors, chaplains and medical officers with wearying monotony have testified to the same effect.
Has not their accumulated evidence been published in Blue books? It has; but it has suffered the fate to which all Blue books are doomed, for it has been buried with the dead past. The Prison Commissioners have taken infinite pains to ascertain the truth, and have not been slow in declaring the truth so far as it has been revealed to them.
They tell us that for ten years they have in Pentonville prison measured, weighed and medically examined all the young prisoners, i.e., all those under twenty-one years of age who have undergone sentences in that huge establishment.
Many thousands of such prisoners have passed through Pentonville during those ten years, and a terrible procession of smitten humanity they have presented.
Listen, my lords and gentlemen of both Houses! Heed! all Social Reformers of every kind! Think of it, all you specialists who claim to explore the criminal mind! “On an average they are two inches less in height, and fourteen pounds less in weight than the average industrial population of similar ages; 28 per cent. of them suffer from some physical disease or deprivation,” and then the report goes on to add “the highest proportion of reconvictions was amongst this class, being no less than 40 per cent.”
I demand attention to this statement; nay, it demands and should compel attention of itself.