Now the men who qualify for the provisions of this Act are of two classes. First: the determined and persistent criminal who lives by crime, desires to live by crime, and to whom no other life has any attraction.
Against these men, after being adjudged by a jury to be habitual criminals, we ought to be safeguarded even as we protect ourselves against known madmen.
The second class are criminals because they are quite irresponsible—a helpless class of individuals who have not the ability to maintain themselves, who can do nothing useful unless under control. Most of the men who comprise these two classes are of middle age, many of them decidedly old. When their preventive detention expires they will be ten years older. I question the mercy, as well as the justice of thrusting these old men into useless liberty. Surely it would be better to detain them under reasonable conditions, to let them quietly die out in the hope that few will be found to take their places. And in the days to come that most woefully afflicted human, the epileptic, will not wear the criminal badge or the convict’s brand, and the hideous cruelty inflicted on these unfortunates will be no longer perpetrated.
Their sorrows and their sufferings will make no vain appeal to our pity and care, for we shall protect them and ourselves in a human and scientific way; but not in prison! And when that time comes the horrid term “criminal lunatic” will also disappear from our vocabulary, for it is high time this classification was buried and numbered with the monstrosities of the past.
I protest against this phrase and the consequences that attach to it. Verily it passes the wit of men to conceive how any one can be a criminal and a lunatic at one and the same time, for if he be the one he cannot be the other. So Broadmoor will become the “State Asylum,” and the cruel farce of putting undeniably insane people on their trial will no longer be tolerated, for quietly and mercifully, after due certification they will pass to the mental hospital with no brand of criminality upon them. But I would ask: Are we to be for ever impotent before disease of the brain? Are physical afflictions and deprivations to remain for ever unconsidered when justice holds the scales, and when punishment is decreed? I think not! nay, I am sure, for in the prisons that are yet to be the paternal hand of the State, while exercising a restraining power over its stricken children, will consider their afflictions and limitations and have mercy upon them.
Then, blighted youth, blighted through poverty; disease, malformation or accident will be no longer neglected even though it be criminally inclined; then, the reproach that the State helps only those that can help themselves will be wiped out; then, even in our prisons, the weaklings will receive some portion of their due, and the days of criminal neglect will be ended.
THE END
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.