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During the war the publication of the ordinary annual reports from government departments, including the Reports of the Prison Commission and the Criminal Statistics, was suspended as a matter of economy. There have now been published Prison Commission Reports for 1939 to 1946 and Criminal Statistics in an abridged form for 1939 to 1945. A new and most welcome step has been the publication in 1945 of a booklet Prisons and Borstals, described as a ‘statement of policy and practice in the administration of prisons and Borstal Institutions in England and Wales’.
1 1939–1941, published in May, 1946, Cmd. 6820: 1942–1944, published January, 1947, Cmd. 7010; 1945, published July, 1947, Cmd. 7146; 1946, published December, 1947, Cmd. 7271.
2 Cmd. 7227, published August, 1947.
3 Published for the Home Office by H.M. Stationery Office.
4 Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, The English Prison System, written for the International Prison Congress that was to have been held in 1915 but not published until 1921, p. 77.
5 Fox, L. W, The Modern English Prison, 1934, p. 39.Google Scholar
6 Mr. Herbert Morrison, speech at the opening of a probation hostel at Birmingham, on March 28, 1944.
7 Report of the Departmental Committee on Prisons, C.7702, 1895, with Minutes of Evidence, C.7702,1.
8 Gladstone Report, para. 25.
9 Ibid., para. 23.
10 Ibid., para. 47.
11 P. 137.
12 ‘In fact, what this provision did was to ensure that for twenty-eight days a hard labour prisoner worked less hard than an ordinary prisoner, and the restriction to prisoners so sentenced of the last vestige of separate confinement that was retained was presumably intended simply to preserve in another way the aspect of greater deterrence implied in sentences to Hard Labour’, Fox. op. cit., p. 27.
13 P. 27. This is hard to reconcile with the general outlook shown in Ruggles-Brise's writings, but it is undoubtedly his drafting; he was fond of using French words.
14 The Report to the Secretary of State for Scotland on the International Penitentiary Congress at Washington in 1910, Cd.5640 (1911), at p. 19: ‘Unless for very short periods, it is not in fact in civilised countries now possible, even if thought desirable, to impose such conditions of hardship as would themselves act as deterrents. The loss of liberty is the real deterrent, combined with the feeling of disgrace which the more sensitive experience’.
15 The Modern English Prison, p. 31.
16 Mr. Morrison, see footnote 6.
17 Prison Commission Reports: 1939–41, p. 44; 1942–44, pp. 35 & 40; 1945, p. 34; 1946, p. 41. Standard wages are paid to the Prison Commission, the prisoners receiving the normal payments under the prison earnings scheme.
18 Prison Commission Reports, 1942–44, p. 76; 1945, p. 26.
19 Watson, John, Meet the Prisoner (1939), p. 108,Google Scholar recounts the story of a prisoner who wanted a book for the study of birds, and was provided for his week's reading with Ethel M. Dell's The Way of an Eagle.
20 Prison Commission Report, 1942–44, p. 46. The history of books in prisons is an illustration of the conflict of principles. Books were linked to the progressive stage system, which as Ruggles-Brise tells us (p. 35) was the root of discipline; that is, books were a privilege. A Departmental Committee on Prison Libraries, 1911, Cd. 5589, was required by its terms of reference to have regard to the reformative purposes of prison treatment and not to impair the stage system. Hence between the wars there was a clash between books being a privilege and the desire to encourage reading. Books have now been divorced from the stage system (Report, 1942–44, p. 34) and the encouragement of reading will be helped by the new system whereby local authority libraries are serving prisons (Report, 1946, p. 45).
21 Prison Commission Report, 1939–41, p. 46.
22 Prison Commission Report, 1942–44, p. 33. It was intended to keep to a ratio of sixty per cent, ‘stars’ and forty per cent, ‘ordinaries’, but pressure on accommodation led to the proportion being reversed, and it is thought that this may be beneficial: Prison Commission Report, 1946, p. 35.
23 Prison Commission Report, 1946, p. 31.
24 Prison Commission Reports, 1945, p. 39; 1946, p. 44.
25 These views have appeared piecemeal in various Prison Commission Reports. The most valuable statement is a Memorandum in the Report for 1945, at p. 64.
26 Instead of prison sentences there will be orders for detention in a detention centre (when such places are ready) for three or possibly six months, or any of the courses at present available which include Borstal and probation.
27 These new kinds of sentence cannot be given unless a person has been convicted on indictment of an offence punishable with at least two years. If the offender is not under twenty-one, and has been convicted at least twice before of offences carrying two years or more, and ‘the court is satisfied that it is expedient with a view to his reformation and the prevention of crime’, he can be sentenced to corrective training for not less than two or more than four years. If the offender is not under thirty, and has at least three previous convictions on indictment of offences carrying two years and was on at least two of those occasions sentenced to Borstal, imprisonment or corrective training, the court if ‘satisfied that it is expedient for the protection of the public’ may sentence him to preventive detention for not less than five or more than fourteen years.
28 1932, Cmd. 4090.