The Vagrancy Problem. / The Case for Measures of Restraint for Tramps, Loafers, and Unemployables: With a Study of Continental Detention Colonies and Labour Houses

by William Harbutt Dawson

(5) Certain classes of confirmed inebriates.

(6) Unmarried women of inferior mental and moral capacity, dependent on the rates, who have had more than one illegitimate child.

Some of these offenders would be committed by the magistrates owing to the action of the police in the ordinary way. In Poor Law cases it would be justifiable to dispense with open judicial proceedings, and to empower the Poor Law Authority to commit, on a certificate signed by one or more magistrates, giving the offender (as in Hamburg)[46] the right of appeal, first to the authority itself against the execution of its resolution to proceed, and before the execution of a magisterial certificate to Petty Sessions.

There remains another class of persons who constitute a serious social burden and inconvenience, the criminals, loafers, and paupers of alien origin, who probably are more numerous, and certainly are more indulgently treated, in England than in any Continental country. At present a small minority of the criminal aliens convicted are deported after the completion of their sentences. The number of aliens (the Colonies and India not counted), convicted and committed to the local prisons in 1907 was 2,799, or 4.3 per cent. of the total number. The aliens recommended for deportation in that year numbered 289.[47] It is conceivable that deportation will be resorted to upon a very much more extensive scale, and eventually that the duty and expense of punishment, where the alien is detained, will be undertaken by the country of nationality; there is obviously little reason or satisfaction in maintaining criminal aliens in prison when banishment awaits them immediately on release.[48] As for the alien vagabond and loafer we have the example of Continental States to guide us. The laws of Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland expressly enjoin expulsion as the treatment of such persons; they are simply taken across the nearest frontier, and are warned against returning. It would not be unreasonable to apply to alien loafers the summary treatment which their own Governments do not hesitate to enforce. As to the destitute who fall upon the Poor Law, it should be possible to conclude with Continental Governments treaties applying internationally the principle of "relief settlement," under which each State would either receive its own citizens who became chargeable to the public funds of another country, or at least would refund the costs of their maintenance to the Poor Law Authority which discharged this duty for it.

The latest complete return of alien paupers in England and Wales relates to July 1, 1903, when their number was 1,753, of whom 897 were relieved in London, and 856 in the provinces. They included 587 indoor paupers, 694 outdoor paupers, and 472 insane in asylums. Exclusive of the insane, they consisted of 117 men relieved with wives or children, 95 wives of men relieved, 95 women relieved with children, but not with husbands, 362 other men, 193 other women, 359 children of men and women relieved, and 60 other children. Of the total of 1,753 alien paupers of all classes, 715 or 41 per cent. were from Russia and Poland, 502 or 30 per cent. from Germany, 110 or 6 per cent. from France, 106 or 6 per cent. from Italy, 70 or 4 per cent. from Norway and Sweden, and the remaining 250 represented twenty-three other countries. In London the aliens represented 0.74 per cent. of the total pauperism, in the provinces they represented 0.33 per cent. The support of these outsiders constitutes a public burden for which there seems no moral justification. The question of their treatment is one which should not be approached in a captious, much less a bigoted, spirit, but if it is inequitable—as the law declares it to be—that one English Poor Law Union should support the paupers of another, it is doubly inequitable that the nation should show to other countries an unequally reciprocated generosity in the care of so many of their citizens, and these amongst the least desirable.

It would be essential to success that detention should, in all but the most hopeful cases, be for a long period. This is not only the practice of all Continental Labour Houses, but the past prison treatment of vagrants in this country proves the uselessness of short sentences. In Germany the term of commitment may extend to two years; in Belgium it must fall within two and seven years. At the same time discretion should be given to the authorities to curtail the sentence, within fixed limits, where the detainee gives proof of reformation and a desire to follow a regular mode of life. In such a case, release would be on parole, and in the event of a repetition of the offence which entailed commitment, the man would be reapprehended and sent back to the Labour House to complete his sentence without further legal procedure.

There are strong reasons why Detention Colonies and Labour Houses should be county institutions, just as they are provincial institutions in Prussia. The fact that many of their inmates, under the organisation proposed, would be defaulters committed on the application of the Poor Law Authorities, is a strong argument for such a local basis. There is reason to fear that if the Colonies and Labour Houses were formally incorporated in the prison system of the country, they would imbibe too much the prison atmosphere and spirit, and would tend to become identical with existing houses of correction, just as the houses of correction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ultimately lost their special character as reformatory institutions. It might be desirable that offenders sentenced should be removed for detention to the county in which they had legal settlement, in preference to being punished in the county in which the offence was committed, but failing that course, the county or parish of settlement would be liable for all costs of maintenance as in the case of non-settled paupers.

While primarily the cost of these institutions would be a county charge, Poor Law Authorities would be required to pay on a fixed scale for the maintenance of all persons detained at their instigation, and it might be expedient to require in respect of every detainee a certain contribution from the parish in which he had legal settlement, as is the case in some of the Swiss cantons. The liability of the detainees themselves would be compounded by their labour, which it would be the business of the Colonies and Labour Houses to employ to the best possible advantage. Although, on this plan, the institutions would be under county management, it would be necessary that the State should exercise far-going powers of control, either through the Home Office, the Local Government Board, or the Prison Board, and that all schemes of organisation, regulations, the more important appointments, and also expenditure of certain kinds, should receive the approval of the Central Authority.

It should not be required, nor would it be necessary, that every county should have its own Detention Colony or Labour House. For reasons both of economy and efficiency counties would be allowed to combine. Only in this way would it be possible to secure variety of type in the establishment of these institutions. Not much experience would be needed to show that the same treatment would not suit every class of offender; most of the Colonies, no doubt, would be fairly uniform, but one or more would be required for the more rigorous discipline which would have to be meted to old offenders. Possibly, a single Colony of this kind, organised after the pattern of the Beggars' Depot of Merxplas, in Belgium,[49] would serve for the whole country. If the existing Poor Law is, in the elegant phrase now current, to be "broken up", it might be found that some of the existing rural workhouses would serve as the nuclei of Detention Colonies of the milder type.