INDETERMINATE SENTENCES
SIR,—Prisoners at present cost the good citizen a lot of money and on release there is the ever-present risk of relapse into crime. The genuine anxiety this causes some people and the humanitarian, impulses of others Would be resolved by a penal system in which a man's Period of confinement was determined by his fitness to return to civilisation. This fitness could be decided by a board of doctors, lawyers and criminologists. Our prisons could be turned into factories of various types—pace the trade unions—and the men paid variously according to their work. From this income, they could pay for their keep, recompense to some extent their victims, save for the day they go out, and in the meantime some would learn a trade and gain in a sense of responsibility—and until they do so they do not regain their freedom.
Undoubtedly some positions would be difficult to staff; but these could be filled from outside, either by ex-prison employees who have not become settled or by good citizens whose influence may be of help. This would not satisfy the blood lust of those who Want flogging or hanging as vengeance or for other reasons, but then far-sightedness is rarely among their attributes. I do not presume to understand the legal position, but long sentences, before which the Lord Chief Justice hesitates, and more ready re- missions as you suggest, would obviate the need for sentence at the Queen's Pleasure.—Yours faithfully,
R. M. InGACHE Officers' Mess, Royal Air Force, Eastleigh, Nairobi, Kenya, BFPO 10
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