PRISON REFORM NEEDED.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 15 November 1918, Page 1

PRISON REFORM NEEDED.

HUMAN DOG KENNELS. Stephen Hobhouse, an ex-prisouer, has written an article in which he recounts his experiences and what the State does with the bodies of men when it puts them in prison. In this article, which is printed in the ' Quarterly Keview,' the writer's aim " is to give the reader a record of the writer's impressions of otu- prison system, and, in particular, of its moral and mental effect upon convicted prisoners. It is basod upon some 12 months' experience of prison life, of which four months were spent in a largo London prison, and nearly eight months in a smaller county gaol. " The characteristics of the system, as impressed upon me by many dreaiy weeks of experience, seemed to group themselves around three main heads, which I p'ropose to illustrate successively : " Firstly, discomfort for the body and starvation for the soul;. secondly, the attempt to crush out the sense of individuality and the instinct to servo others: and lastly, entire absence of trust, and government by fear. " These characteristics are dominant enough to give the imp-esaion that they represent the guiding objects of the sj-stem, and they seem to stamp it as essentially deterrent and punitive, without the reformative elements that one would hope to find there. "This treatmeit of a man as a dog, or, by an equally apt comparison, as a component part of a machine that needs little or no attention beyond watching and oiling at fixed intervals, leads on naturally to my second point. Nearly every feature of prison life seems deliberately arranged to destroy a man's sense of his own personality, his power of choice and initiative, his possessive instincts, his conception of himself as a being designed to love and to serve his fellow-man. His very name is blotted out, and he becomes a number. A.3.21 and D.2.65 were two of-my designations. ' " Ho is continually, of course, under lock and key. ignored except as an object for spying. When not locked up he can hardly move a muscle except under orders. There is usually a hxed and unvarying monotony about the daily and weekly round. In default of other interests one's soul, dwells longingly on the few incidents like the weekly bath, the weekly change of socks and towel, tho daily dinner ;:;;d march rtiimd the exercse ring that breaks the dullness of life. The scanty contents of one's,coll must be arranged, subject to the daily inspection, in exact uniformity with the arrangement

of every other cell. This does not, it is true, apply to the evening and night time, and it is a roal satisfaction to bo able to choose ou which portion of one's' cement floor the bed board is to bo laid down. " The want of confidenco in tho prisoners is accompanied by a corresponding want of confidence in the warders. Those officers are also spied upon by the chief warder and governor; and such is the fear of collusion or bribery that a warder is forbidden to eugage in 'familiar' conversation with a prisoner, and is net supposed to say anything to him that does not bear upon his work or the prison rules. "I entered prison,'' adds Mr Hobhouße, " with all the advantages of a robust philosophy of life, buoyed up by the belief that 1 was fighting in a good cause, and without any sanse of guilt other than that which is inseparable from the Christian outlook upon the world. Yet, with all these advantages, 1 seem only to have just managed to preserve my mental balance up to the time of my release. I ask myself how I could possibly have survived if I had possessed little or no faith in a spiritual world; if I had been the victim of unregulated and violentpassions; if I bad done tilings for which my conscience smote me, and over which: my solitude forced me lo brood unceasingly; if I had felt myself friendless, unloved, and unloving, cast out by the society to whose sins against mo I imputed my own misery, 'tan is essentially a social being, and to take away altogether the healing power of human intercourse, the opportunities for self-expression, and the 'possibility of doing a good turn to others, iB a crime against Nature, a deliberate assault upon the citadel of mental and moral life. The human brain is not proof against more than a very limited amount of mental suffering, '.-.lid both common sense and the actual results of the discipline indicate that, where prison does not simply confirm. a man in his hardened state of vice, it ends by breaking down his mind and will power, so as at least to render him a useless member of society, and, in the worst cases, to drive him to insanity." ( '