Report From The Select Committee Of The House Of Lords On The Present State Of Discipline In Gaols And Houses Of Correction With Proceedings Minutes Of Evidence Appendix And Index Session 1863 PDF Download

Excerpt from Report From the Select Committee on the House of Lords on the Present State of Discipline in Gaols and Houses of Correction, 1863: Together With the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix On a subject so large in extent as that referred to them, the Committee have obviously been unable to carry their inquiries into the particular management and details of all or even of the majority of county and borough prisons. Enquiry into the Irish and Scotch prisons is not included in the Order of the House; and the Welsh Gaols, from their smaller size, and as falling naturally under the rules and principles of penal discipline which are applicable to the English prisons, have appeared to demand somewhat less investigation than those in England. With regard to the English Gaols and Houses of Correction, they have endeavoured, as far as lay in their power, to summon for examination witnesses who, from official position or from known differences of personal opinion, might in some sense be said to represent the various schools of thought and practice which the administration of our prisons has developed. Amongst so many persons speaking on so many and such various systems of prison management, some conflict of evidence is naturally to be found, but that disagreement is one rather of opinion than of fact, and it turns mainly upon points of secondary importance. The Committee have been greatly guided towards their general conclusions by the remarkable concurrence on the larger questions of many of the ablest and most experienced witnesses whom they have examined. I. They have, in the first place, to remark that many and wide differences, as regards construction, labour, diet and general discipline, exist in the various Gaols and Houses of Correction in England and Wales, leading to an inequality, uncertainty and inefficiency of punishment, productive of the most prejudicial I esults. In some gaols, such as Wakefield, the cells are constructed on the separute system; in many, as at Leicester and Stafford, a portion only of the cells are certified, though all prisoners are separated; and in others, such as Maid tone and Coldbath-fields, the associated system still prevails extensively. On reference to a Return Ordered by the House of Commons, 18 April 1856, it appears that the separate system was not at that time established in the Borough Gaols of Bodmin, Falraouth, Saltash, Exeter, Barnstaple, Colchester, Ilford, Gloucester, Deal, Dover, Westminster, Oxford, Beccles, Hastings, and Rye, in the southern district; nor in those of Leicester, Kirton-in-Lindsey, Louth, Spilsby, Norwich, Kings Lynn, Nottingham, Wenlock, Litchfield, Wnvwick, Coventry, Appleby, Kendal, York Castle, and the City Gaol, in the northern disti ict. The Queens Bench in Surrey, and the countv prisons of Coldl)athfields, Monmouth, and Rutland are also described as wanting in the accommodation of separate cells (together with the Liberty Prison of St. Albans). Since then the gaols at Saltash, Deal, Beccles, Hastings Coventry and Wenlock have been closed, whilst many have been wholly or partially fitted up with sepaarate cells. Amongst these are the gaols of Bodmin, Exeter, Gloucester, Oxford, Nottingham, Leicester and Warwick, together with the estminster House of Correction. The differences with regard to labour are still more marked. In some gaols Appendix N. the treadwheel is the chief and occasionally the only means of giving labour. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com