TREATMENT OF PRISON INMATES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 299, 14 September 1937, Page 10

TREATMENT OF PRISON INMATES

An extensive programme of penal reform which contemplates a more humane prison system is being actively undertaken in Great Britain by the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare. Speaking at Cambridge a month ago he said the policy of an enlightened administration should be governed by three main principles: do make every effort to reduce to a minimum the number of persons who are sen to prison; to endeavour to secure that persons who have been sentenced to one term of imprisonment shall not turn into habitual cnminas, to keep a proper balance between the reformative and the punitive The trend of public opinion in recent years has moved substantially in the direction of the reclamation of the prisoner rather than his punishment. But there still exists a strong body of opinion that a person guilty of anti-social conduct must pay the price, in tut —that his punishment must fit the crime. The sane outlook lies in the middle between extremes of thought. The tendency in some quarters ' to regard every criminal purely as a pathological case is not w. o esome. The young person who goes wrong from a misdirected sense of adventure, or the prisoner who has got into trouble through toolisnness, are in most instances material from which good citizens can be built. These comprise, according to a general average in most institutions, from 70 to 80 per cent, of the inmates. At the time of their incarceration they are not hardened criminals, and they pi esent a fertile field for reform by sympathetic treatment. But there is the Bill Sykes type, the criminal who will not keep out of trouble. He is confined for the protection of society—the “plain bad man. To say, as many earnest reformers do, that remedial treatment, and not punishment of the criminal is needed in this age, is to assume that all criminals will respond to gentler measures designed for then reclamation. Zeal for more humane treatment should not be allowed to degenerate into maudlin sentiment. Broadly, the three principles enunciated by Sir Samuel Hoare embody what the ordinary man will regard aS nothing less than common sense in prison policy. There is profound wisdom in his emphasis on the need for keeping a balance between the reformative and punitive elements.