Commission of Inquiry into the Penal System of the Colony

“ To us it appears to be a fatal objection to the Elmira system that criminals, merely because they are criminals should, at the public cost, be surrounded by conditions of life and culture infinitely superior to those enjoyed by honest men of the same rank in life. ”

“ The main obstacle in the way of the abolition of capital punishment is the difficulty of substituting any adequate penalty, which shall not be infinitely more cruel than the punishment of which it takes the place. Where the experiment has been tried, in the United States, of indeterminate sentences, murders have not only taken place inside the gaol, but have been committed by released prisoners of homicidal tendencies, who are supposed to have been reformed. ”

“ If it is important to keep men as much as possible out of prison, it is doubly necessary to keep out women; but it is, at the same time, a much harder thing to accomplish. This arises from the fact that the great bulk of female offenders enter the criminal arena after the age of 21, and can only be dealt with by a sentence of imprisonment. ”

“ If the Grand Jury is satisfied that the evidence in the possession of the Crown is inadequate to secure a conviction it throws the bill out. It is obvious that by the cessation of proceedings at this early stage an immense saving in the costs of needless trials is effected, whilst innocent men are not needlessly detained in custody. In Western Australia this part of the functions of the Grand Jury is too rarely exercised. The result is that, as compared with other countries, an unusual proportion of prisoners is sent up for trial against whom there never was any substantial case. ”

“ Question 37.
∗5 "Imprisonment should be a gradual preparation for liberty. It should be organised on such a principle that the contrast between detention and liberty will not be too great when the day of liberation at last arrives."—Morrison. ”

“ The Queensland Commissioners point out that the blacks have their own customary laws, and a breach of these laws is followed by punishment amongst themselves, in some form or other. It seems—they say—on broad principles unjust that not only should an offender suffer punishment at the hands of his tribe, but that he should be punished a second time for the same offence by the law of the race which has dispossessed him of his hunting grounds and taught him the vices of civilisation. ”

“ Short sentences, if made sufficiently severe, have the great advantage of relieving the taxpayer of the support of a number of persons who ought to be compelled to earn their own living, and the living of those people who are dependent upon them, and in the case of short-sentence men it is possible to adopt a lower and less expensive diet regimen than is practicable in the case of men who are incarcerated for a long term of years.
The degree of certainty or of uncertainty in the matter of punishment is one of the most important influences in determining the amount of crime in any country. ”

“ It may, in the interests of society, be desirable that an old offender should be thus handicapped, but we are nevertheless of opinion that every charge should be tried strictly on its own merits, and without any regard to the antecedents of the prisoner. Lord Coleridge went further, and laid it down as a first principle that in every ideal criminal code each offence should be punished by the infliction of the penalty provided for that offence, and without regard to any previous commission by the person convicted of an offence of similar character. ”

“ This want of proper employment is one of the greatest evils of the prison system at Fremantle Gaol. It is inevitable that where men are not kept fully employed, they become demoralised, and on their release from Gaol, are less than ever fitted to become decent members of society. ”

“ No attempt has hitherto been made at Fremantle to classify these different kinds of prisoners. Without some kind of classification, discipline is impossible, and it is therefore not surprising to learn that the only code of rules and regulations which is supposed to guide the officers and prisoners is systematically disregarded by both, for the simple reason that it is wholly inapplicable to existing circumstances. ”

“ Having regard, nevertheless, to the large proportion of foreign offenders still in our midst it would not be reasonable to expect a young colony, such as Western Australia is, to take upon itself to initiate costly methods of reforming the criminal, such us are adopted in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and at Elmira, in the State of New York, where older, more settled, and wealthier communities have set in motion various elaborate and costly schemes of criminal reform. ”

“ If females began crime at any earlier period of life it would be possible to send them to reformatories or industrial schools, and a fair hope of saving them would still remain."
Undoubtedly the heavy social penalties involved by imprisonment press much more severely upon women than upon men, and for that reason a much briefer term of incarceration is necessary in their case than in the case of men, in order to attain the same punitive results. ”

“ In every case it should be the object of the authorities to make the punishment sharp, severe, and effective, so that, while the first sentence shall be inflicted at the minimum of cost to the taxpayer, and the maximum of discomfort to the criminal, consistently with humanity, there shall be as little probability as possible of the taxpayer being called upon at an early date to pay for the second or third punishment of the same offender. ”

“ One of the greatest difficulties in the treatment of female offenders is the fact that, compared to men, they enter upon a criminal career at a much later age, and thus frequently at the outset overstep the period within which they could, as juvenile offenders, be subjected to reforming influences.∗
On this point Morrison says:—"The criminal age among women is later in its commencement because of the greater care and watchfulness exercised over girls than boys; but it is more persistent while it lasts, because the plunge into crime is a more irreparable thing in a woman than in a man. ”

“ Then, as to pauper expirees, the provision is:—"If for a period of ten years after becoming free a man shall have earned his own living, without ever becoming a burden on the public, then the Imperial Treasury shall be altogether free from liability about him, and any subsequent charge on his account must fall on the colony and not on this country, whether or not he may be disabled by some organic disease under which he labored whilst still a prisoner." ”

“ It is a moot point whether the classification of prisoners should, as in some countries, follow strictly the period of incarceration, and the number of previous convictions, or, as in other countries, be determined by the nature of the offence.
On the whole, the Commissioners are of opinion that classification should follow the nature of the offence rather than the term of the sentence, thus grouping together for the purpose of prison treatment, criminals who commit the same class of crime, rather than those who have been sentenced for similar periods. ”

“ A weak spot in the Elmira system is the not unnatural tendency of all prison authorities, in spite of constant practical proof to the contrary, to regard those prisoners as being the best and most hopeful characters who give least trouble to the authorities during their incarceration. It is, however, perfectly notorious that the most virile, the most capable and intelligent prisoners are by no means usually the best behaved in prison. ”

“ If, on the score of expense, the Government deems it expedient to adopt this system throughout the colony, it might nevertheless be immediately enforced at the centres of population which are connected with the railway system. If the judges of the Supreme Court are unable through pressure of work to find time to go on circuit, the Government should consider the desirableness of appointing a district judge, with jurisdiction in criminal matters, and a limited jurisdiction in civil cases, thus greatly reducing the pressure of civil business, which is now sent up from country towns. ”

“ That is to say, the varying economic, social, political, and even climatic conditions of different countries naturally lead to the prevalence or otherwise of particular classes of crime. Thus we have already pointed out that in West Australia the cause which has been chiefly operative during the last few years has been the depression in the Eastern Colonies coincident with the gold discoveries in this colony. There has been an immense influx of population in search of wealth, and among the new arrivals thus attracted have undoubtedly been a number of notorious criminals. ”

“ To the Gaol officials, and to those accustomed to deal with prisoners, the offence of escaping from Gaol presents itself as one of special enormity, and as one, therefore, calling for exceptionally severe punishment. Your Commissioners confess that they do not in any way share this view, The desire to regain liberty is a perfect natural one, and is generally possessed most keenly by the best class of prisoners, i.e., to men of whom the greatest hopes may be entertained that they will, when reformed, prove the most energetic and useful citizens. ”

“ Long sentences fail altogether in their object, and press most severely on the taxpayers who are responsible for the maintenance of the prisoners during their incarceration. Beyond a certain point which is very soon reached, no sentence of imprisonment is either punitive or deterrent, although under a proper system it may possibly, in some circumstances, be reformative. So far as the average prisoner is concerned, the worst part of the punishment is endured during the first few weeks of incarceration. ”

“ In this important particular the police departments of the various colonies cannot in any way compare with the Salvation Army, because the police necessarily know the individual merely qua offender or qua destitute, whilst the Army brings human sympathies into play, and follows him throughout every step of his career. If a discharged prisoner has been under the protection of the Army in Brisbane, its influences will follow him to Melbourne or Adelaide or Perth, and at any place he goes to he can be immediately subjected to a beneficial environment. ”

“ It is an undoubted hardship that an offender should be brought down from some remote part of the province for incarceration, and eventually be discharged at Fremantle without any means of returning to his home. To some extent this has been dealt with with under the heading of "Remuneration of prisoners," but it is urged that every discharged prisoner who desires it should be provided with a second-class ticket to any point on the railway system. ”

“ Neither sex should be admitted to a gaol under the age of sixteen for males and eighteen for females. Lunatics, imbeciles, drunkards, vagrants (meaning thereby homeless wanderers, and not necessarily criminal characters) , diseased persons, should all be treated in institutions especially adapted for them, not in gaol. The prison, so far as it applies to the association of prisoners, should not receive those sentenced to penal servitude. The latter, after completing their period of separate treatment, should go directly to a labor establishment. ”

“ He added that it was my own fault that I was in Gaol, as I should have told the police at the time who it was who committed the robbery. I had good reasons to know who it was, but I did not consider it necessary to express my suspicion concerning a man who was spending money freely at my place in the course of business. Was it my duty to tell the police that a man was at my place spending money freely, and that I did not think that he earned the money? I understand that Whelan is leaving the police force, and that both he and Anderson know perfectly well who the real criminal was. ”

“ In their case even more than in that of Europeans, it is essential that all punishment should be short, sharp, and effective, whilst if it is to be deterrent in its influence upon others it should, wherever practicable, be inflicted in the district where the offence was committed.
Confinement in gaol, especially at a distance from the scene of the crime, has no deterrent effect whatever upon the offender's fellow tribesmen. All they know, as the Queensland Commissioners point out, is that "the man has disappeared;" they have no conception where. ”

“ They are more likely to develop into useful citizens if they work under police supervision for their own living than if at the cost of the taxpayer they spend the whole of their early manhood in Gaol. In this connection we may state that we are very strongly of opinion that the Fremantle Gaol is a most undesirable and unsuitable place for the incarceration of youthful prisoners. There is no suitable employment for them, and the one hour a week of schooling which they receive is practically worthless as an educational process. ”