Prisons and prisoners - suggestions as to treatment and classification of criminals

Abstract

The English Prison Commissioners in their Report for 1897 say:?"It is, perhaps, obvious, and, at the same time, it cannot too often be impressed on the public mind, that, under the law of the land, imprisonment in a local prison follows as a penalty, with or without hard labour, in default of a fine for offences which vary enormously in their degree of criminality. In some of these indeed, the element of criminality may almost be said to be absent. Thus is created the great and difficult problem of prison administration, by the fact that by deprivation of the liberty of the individual, by means of imprisonment, which theoretically, should only be had recourse to when the interests of society would suffer from the offender being at large, has, in the course of time, come to be made use of as an ordinary mechanical punishment for every new offence created by the legislature."