"We are strongly of opinion that as regards any buildings coming within our proposals, means should be adopted to protect the ratepayer from any expenditure that is not really necessary for the object in view."[78]
The Committee would deal kindly with the private interests which may be expected to raise an outcry against Labour Colony competition in the labour market. While, however, they would restrict competition with free industry as far as possible, they add the reservation that on that principle free labour would not have to compete with the Colonies—in other words, the latter should have a right to supply, if able, the whole of their own needs.
The Committee would adopt in full the Continental practice of allowing the inmates to earn wages out of which to supplement their food rations and to save for the day of release.
"We realise the futility of establishing labour colonies for the reformation of the habitual vagrant unless some means can be devised of making him work: and it would be undesirable to have to resort to constant punishment to enforce the performance of the daily task. The punishments, too, would be limited; bread and water diet could not be given continually, and confinement to a cell would probably soon lose its effect. Compulsion, therefore, would in some cases be impossible, and the inducements to good conduct and industry which are held out to the inmates of prisons, such as letters or visits from their friends, classification indicating superiority of some kind, and so on, would scarcely appeal to the majority of the inmates of a vagrant colony. We believe that the best and simplest method of securing the desired end would be to allow the colonists to earn by industry and good conduct small sums of money, a portion of which should be retained until their discharge, and a portion handed over to them weekly to spend, if they like, at the canteen of the colony in the purchase of extra articles of food, tobacco, etc.; and the accumulation of a certain amount of earnings might afford an opportunity for earlier discharge."[79]
It is worthy of note that the Merxplas theory of social reinstatement is virtually embraced by the Committee, who say:—
"In the case of labour colonies, much expense in the way of buildings and staff can be saved by adopting the view accepted at Merxplas, that it is not worth while to go to great expense in preventing the escape of the inmates. If a colonist escapes, and is able to support himself without coming within the reach of the law, his escape from the colony is no matter for regret; if he breaks the law and comes again before a magistrate a proper system of identification will ensure his being sent back to the colony. If the detention is intended not so much as a punishment, but rather as a means of restraining the vagrant from his debased mode of life, the risk of his escaping need not be regarded so seriously as in the case of a criminal committed to prison to expiate his crime."
Considering the question of finding employment for discharged prisoners, the Committee recommend that the superintendent of each police division should be responsible for the collection of information as to work available in his district, and that this information should be transmitted at frequent intervals to the chief constable of the county, who would send complete lists to each police station and to the casual wards for the inspection of those seeking work. This recommendation was made before the decision to establish State labour registries in all the large towns. Where this new machinery exists it would clearly be expedient to use it, and for that purpose it would be necessary for each Labour Colony to keep in constant touch with the nearest official registry, receiving its periodical lists of vacant situations, and notifying such reliable labour as it may have at disposal. The public labour registries would in this way be helpful in assisting discharged inmates to find industrial employment, but in so far as agricultural work might be needed, the Colonies would probably have to rely upon their own sources of information.
When they come to discuss the authorities which should establish and be responsible for the maintenance of the Detention Colonies, some of the Committee's recommendations seem to me to call for reconsideration. They object to State-managed Colonies on the ground that the State would provide institutions of the wrong kind, and would be sure to establish either too many or too few,[80] and propose that the County Councils and voluntary philanthropic and religious agencies should be left both to establish and manage these institutions.