THE MODERN PRISON CURRICULUM.* DR. QUINTON, as a former Governor
and medical officer of Holloway Prison, is entitled to a very respectful hearing on penal questions, and we are glad to be able to add that we have seldom read a book on this perplexing subject which combines more nicely the essentials of humanity and common sense. The argument amounts to this, that experience has already indicated plainly the penal principles which achieve the happy medium of simultaneously reforming and deterring, and that if such principles do not end crime it is because crime will exist so long as the human being continues to be what he is. It would be a vast mistake if it were supposed that Dr. Quinton's argument is pessimistic. He writes most cheerfully of what has been accomplished and most hopefully of what will yet be done.
He rejects alike punishment that is stupidly severe and punishment that does not punish. In the eighteenth century, when the criminal code was so severe that more than 200 offences were punishable with death, crime flourished as at no other period. Even in the nineteenth century, when long penal sentences were inflicted for slight offences, convicts were more than three times as many as to-day. Convicts generally have an exact sense of what is a deserved and what an undeserved punishment. They expect to pay the penalty of crime, but an obviously vindictive or disproportionate punishment brings out their doggedness or defiance, and the results are unpleasant for the officials of the prison and bad for the convict himself. Such mistakes are old history, and a marked decrease in crime in the last quarter of a century has been the encouraging response. There has, however, been a retrogression in criminal statistics during the last few years. To some extent the unfavourable figures are to be explained by different methods of procedure, but when allowance has been made for that it appears that there has been a criminal reaction, which is probably due to mistakes in the direction of excessive leniency. Barbarity will not kill criine, but it is just as true that kindness will not kill it. The most striking example of an undesirable automatic response to the relaxa- tion of the law is to be found in the treatment of vagrancy. In civilized countries a too severe code is sure to be loosely administered. By far the best results are obtained from a comparatively mild code firmly administered. Dr. Quinton
• The Modern Pli401% Curriculum a General Endow of our Pdnal Sysiont. By 72.F. Quinton, M.D. London: and Co. [6s, net.]
suggests that one influence in the recent unfavourable development is the existence of the Court of Criminal Appeal. We do not understand that lie in the least wishes for the abolition of that Court, but he notes that the free exercise of its right to reduce sentences causes judges to lower their sentences to a point where there is no likelihood of their being upset on appeal.
Dr. Quinton has a just contempt for the criminal anthropo- logists who have allowed themselves to become so bemused with their theories that they talk as though a man with a particular shape of ear, or head, or brow, were a predestined criminal who could not possibly save himself from crime. Dr. Quint= knows the physical characteristics of the criminal as well as any man, and does not for a moment deny their reality ; but when such characteristics are accepted as a patent to pass through the world without an attempt at self-control he makes a very manful and reasonable protest. To illustrate the low nervous organism of some criminals he gives from his own experience instances of insensibility to pain :— "I have myself removed a broken finger for a convict who absolutely refused an antesthetio, and who watched my proceed- ings with interest and apparent freedom from pain: he oven suggested that I should cut off a spicula of bone so as to make 'a tidy job of it.' Malingerers afford frequent opportunities for observing this physical peculiarity which denotes a low type of nervous organization. I have, for instance, frequently laid open acutely inflamed abscesses, which to an ordinary patient with a normal nervous system would cause intense pain, and fished out such foreign substances as bits of thread and wire, which had been purposely inserted in the flesh by the convicts themselves, without apparently causing any real suffering. In the case of one prisoner who had acute inflammation in both eyes that lasted for several days, and was of a suspicious character, I stumbled accidentally on the exciting cause. The patient was continually tamperingwith seine part of his body, and was an adept at shirking work. He deliberately drank the lotion supplied for his eyes ! and I was summoned hastily to find him ill with un- pleasant symptoms. I discovered in each eye, tucked in under the lid, a small piece of spring steel which he had no time to remove when his symptoms came on. Ho admitted afterwards that he had been in the habit of wearing' them in his eyes for a couple of hours a day so as to get ready for the doctor."
The crux of penology is the treatment of the recidivist. Effective methods have long since been discovered for those who will yield in various degrees to reformative processes. But what of those who resolutely do not intend to reform and are, as nearly as a sane man can be, incapable of reform P The violent convict who used to attack his warders regularly was a phenomenon of the early part and the middle of last century, and the type has almost passed away. But the recidivist of to-day, who behaves in an almost exemplary manner in prison, is polite and obliging, and emerges from penal servitude only to return again almost at once, and so on throughout his life —what is one to say of him P Dr. Quinton approves of the latest scheme of preventive deten- tion. Englishmen, careful of the rights of the individual, are naturally shy of anything that appears like an everlast- ing sentence. They are unwilling to put into the hands of the prison authorities such an instrument as an indeter- minate sentence that might be abused, rarely perhaps but still atrociously; and so a compromise has been effected by which preventive detention shall be imposed for stated periods only. It is of the essence of all preventive detention that it should cover long periods. It is a system of supervision rather than of punishment, and it is designed to be comparatively agreeable on the express condition that it lasts long enough to instil new habits in the criminal. Habits cannot be acquired in a moment. If the kindly Borstal system does not last long enough for habit-making it fails in its one purpose. The curse of this country is to have scientific systems of penology upset by kind-hearted sentimentalists who do more harm than one can easily measure. A short Borstal sentence is a con- tradiction in terms and an injustice to the boy on whom it is inflicted; yet judges who ought to have known better have given such sentences. In spite of being sometimes misunder- stood, however, the Borstal system has been a splendid success, and Dr. Quinton speaks of it as having already decimated the class who are on the threshold of becoming habitual criminals. For ourselves we shall never deplore the notorious escapade of the Dartmoor shepherd, because it was a beautifril example of Nemesis when sloppy sentimentalism upsets science. The man was a typical recidivist, preying on society ; he was an agreeable enough person, and no one wished that he should be treated cruelly; it was recognized that he was even more his own enemy than any one else's. He was sentenced to a long term of preventive detention, and was not, apparently, unhappy in the occupation provided for him ; yet Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Churchill intervened, spoke of this term of preventive detention as though it were an excessive sentence of ordinary penal servitude for a trivial offence, and Mr. Churchill set the offender free, with the inevitable result that convulsed the world with amusement.
Dr. Quinton holds that there is no such thing as absolute truth in penology. Every nation must adapt its code to its own characteristics. He says that though the Elmira system may possibly be suited to Americans, it would almost certainly be unsuited to Englishmen. Moreover lie points out that one of the principles of the Elmira system—that no criminal is irreclaimable—is already abandoned, to judge by a recent Report, which complains of the existence of incor- rigibles. It is a great pity, by the way, that there are no statistics on the working of the indeterminate sentence in the United States.
We cannot go into Dr. Quinton's plea for the advantages and the kindness of separate confinement for novices in crune. Separate confinement is, of course, a very different thing from solitary confinement, though well-meaning people are often struck with horror quite unnecessarily owing to their confusion of the two. As for softening influences In prison life we are interested to learn that Dr. Quinton prefers music—he has seen a whole prison audience deeply moved by the Hallelujah Chorus—and the personal "straight talk" to lectures. No lecturer can possibly discover a method and manner which will satisfy all the varying degrees of intellect and perception in a prison community. The whole book seems to us to be full of common sense, and it never once loses sight of the fact that the ultimate purpose of all imprisonment is reclamation, not punishment.
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