THE UNAVOIDABLE USELESSNESS OF

PRISON LABOUR

I HAVE observed that whenever discussion arises as to the mode in which prisoners should be occupied, the question is considered almost entirely from the moral point of view only—that is, whether it is or is not desirable or essential to promote the industrial employment of prisoners with a view to their moral well-being or reformation, or in order to provide them with means of earning an honest livelihood on discharge. The pecuniary view sometimes comes in, that is, the advantage of turning the labour to profitable account, so as to diminish in some degree the cost of maintaining the prisoners; and it appears as if it was supposed that the only difficulty the question presents is how far it is right that prison labour should compete with free labour, or under what safeguards to prevent unfair competition. It is assumed as a matter that requires no demonstration that it is always possible to employ all prisoners profitably, and that if this is not done it is from want of goodwill in some quarter or that somebody does not see the advantage or will not take the necessary steps.

I think my experience may be useful in the discussion, and as I shall have to show that these assumptions are very far from being warranted, it may be well that I should commence by some autobiographical recollections, which will make it clear that my prejudices have been in favour of the advantage of industrial employment of prisoners from all points of view, and also of the capabilities of prison labour.

My connection with prisons, which terminated only last year, commenced in 1851, when I was sent as a subaltern attached to a company of Royal Engineers (Sappers and Miners they were then called) to Western Australia, to help in directing the labour of the convicts who had lately been sent to that colony. I was put in charge of a large district in which the convicts were to be employed in making roads and bridges. These convicts had all arrived at that stage of their sentences in which they might be released on ticket of leave if they could find an employer, and until this happened they lived in 'depots,' which they had to build themselves.

I had a detachment of sappers under me, some of whom were employed to instruct the prisoners, and to act as foremen and in charge of detached parties. There was no great number of artisans among the prisoners-free artisans were expensive to hire, and the company of sappers could not spare nearly so many to act simply as artisans as were required. In course of time, nevertheless, we got the prisoners to do nearly everything that was required for our works. We made our own bricks, sent parties into the bush to cut and saw timber, others to split shingles for the roofs, others to burn charcoal for the blacksmiths and lime for the building, and in fact provided almost everything for ourselves; and of course I acquired a high opinion of the capabilities of convict labour.

After returning home from this service and working for some years in the War Office in designing fortifications, I was again brought into connection with the prison service by being appointed a Director of Convict Prisons, especially in connection with those prisons in which large public works were being carried on by the convicts. These works offered great opportunities for teaching convicts trades, and the convict prisons were in fact, and still are, schools of technical instruction in various trades. After some years I became head of the department, and as it happened at a moment when the number of convicts was rapidly increasing on our hands on account of the cessation of transportation, the question how these increasing numbers were to be employed loomed in the not distant future. With a view to inviting suggestions on the subject, I read a paper at the Society of Arts, supposing that among the members would be found many who could tell of manufacturing processes in which the prisoners could profitably be employed. The fruit of that paper was lamentably disappointing; the only proposal came from a patentee of some sort of compressed peat, that we should embark on the manufacture of this fuel. The discussion on the paper was all directed to the moral question; many who took part in it described the advantages to the prisoners of industrial work, but nobody gave any help in solving the practical question which it was my object to raise—what employment could they in large numbers be put to?

Sir Henry Cole afterwards suggested the manufacture of a certain kind of marble mosaic in slabs for floors, and this was adopted as an employment for women, whom it suited admirably. A good deal of this work was done for the South Kensington Museum, where it may now be seen. By personal efforts I got orders for a certain quantity at St. Paul's and elsewhere, but the demand was limited. The product was at a disadvantage in comparison with that which could be executed in situ by free labour with the ordinary tesseræ, because of the cost of packing and transport and laying the slabs, which had to be done by free labour. This experience gave a

practical demonstration of the necessity, and also of the difficulty, of insuring a market for the produce of prison labour, a difficulty which all persons who set up a factory have to overcome or else to fail, and which some fail in while others succeed by methods which are not all open to a Government Department.

A great deal of very valuable employment was found in erecting all the buildings required in the prisons. These had been executed by free labour until my predecessor commenced employing prisoners on them.

A very large amount of this work has been done, and it is of the most valuable kind, because it gives the opportunity for learners to acquire practical knowledge of various trades. One or two instances of these works may be given, because of the peculiar circumstances under which they were undertaken. The large prison at Wormwood Scrubs, containing some 1,400 cells, was commenced by surrounding the site by a timber hoarding, and placing inside it a temporary building of wood lined with iron to accommodate 100 prisoners. From this beginning the whole building has been erected by convict labour, the bricks made on the spot, the stone supplied from Portland, castings and forgings from various prisons, and the mechanic's work done in the prison itself, of which the population was increased as the accommodation grew. The circumstances of the construction of Borstal Prison near Rochester are still more remarkable. The site was surrounded by a hoarding, and convicts were brought out daily in omnibuses three miles or so, under suitable guard of course, to erect the buildings inside it. When the buildings were finished the convicts proceeded to construct certain adjoining forts and defensive works, and to cultivate the ground, all in the open country; and when in course of time it was desired that certain more distant forts should be undertaken, a steam tramway was laid, and the novelty might be witnessed of convicts being taken daily in trams backwards and forwards some two miles from their prison to the site of the fort, where they worked surrounded by a palisade.

About the same time printing was introduced as an employment for convicts, but it was limited to supplying our own requirements, for we never could get any other Government printing. Continual attempts were made to induce the Admiralty and War Departments to give employment in manufactures to our prisoners; but these departments naturally, perhaps, looked on the question of supplies from their own point of view only, and considered the prison department like any other manufacturers and not at all as being broadly a Government interest which should be encouraged. When supplies of certain articles were wanted we got them to send us notices that we might tender in competition against ordinary manufacturers, and this sounds fair enough, but it did not enable us to undertake much, for we could not set up a factory merely to execute one order, or

unless we were certain of continuous employment, nor could we with our fluctuating population and our large proportion of learners or half-skilled workers be sufficiently certain of making the large quantities of articles usually contracted for in the short period given for their supply. There was another serious difficulty: the articles when made had to be examined and passed by the official inspectors to see that they corresponded with the sample. Even articles which were practically quite good might be rejected because they might in appearance be inferior to articles made by machinery and by skilled workers. If rejected we had not the same facility for disposing of them as a large manufacturer with extensive connections selling to other buyers goods of the same nature, and they might therefore be a dead loss to Government.

The Post Office gave us a good deal of work making mail bags, baskets, &c. The Office of Works gave little or none beyond getting mats from us. It always seemed to me that Portland stone might well have been supplied to that department from our quarries at Portland as it was for Admiralty and War Office and prison buildings, and in the same way as we supplied Dartmoor granite for the new Scotland Yard.

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A good deal of work was done for the police in making boots and clothing, and this went on until the number of convicts decreased so much that we could not keep up the necessary supply. I may here refer to one of the limitations which must of necessity exist in the supply of articles by prison labour. Shoemakers, tailors, and indeed artisans generally, do not come in any numbers ready trained into ⚫ prison. They have to be taught; until they have gained a considerable degree of skill they cannot turn out work which will pass scrutiny as up to the sample which supplies, whether from contractors or from prisons, must conform to. Whilst they are learning, they are more or less spoiling material, and necessarily produce inferior articles. What is to be done with these? The only answer to this is that the prison department must consume them itself. The number of skilled hands that can be created, therefore, depends on the number for whom this inferior work can be found, and in the aptitude of those who go, through the training. This applies to all trades: unskilled men cannot be made into carpenters, bricklayers, smiths, masons, stone dressers, &c., except by employing them on some work which is going on, in which a small proportion may learn their trade in doing under instruction first the rougher kinds of work, and gradually acquiring skill to do the more finished work. For this reason, and because of the scope afforded to unskilled labour by large public works of construction, this mode of employing convict labour has always been preferred, a preference which has been affirmed by more than one Royal Commission, and particularly by the committee appointed specially to consider the best application of convict

labour, which reported in 1882 in favour of the construction of Dover Harbour.

What I have said so far relates to the employment of convicts whose sentences keep them several years in prison. In 1877 I was brought into relations with the question from another point of view, viz. the employment of prisoners who are under short sentences, the great majority for only a few days, and only a small proportion for more than a few weeks.

The law of prisons, i.e. the Prisons Act 1865, gives little or no encouragement to industrial employment. The report of the committee on which it was founded laid it down very distinctly that the employment of prisoners for profit, or with a view to recouping some of the cost of their maintenance, should be considered quite subordinate to the other object the punishment is intended to serve, i.e. briefly the prevention of crime. Accordingly the Act ordained that all adult male prisoners should during the first three months be employed on 'hard labour of the first class,' and also for the remainder of any longer sentence, unless specially ordered otherwise. Great efforts were made, when the bill was being drafted, to devise a general definition which should indicate what was intended by the above phrase, and a proposal which was made, though not adopted, that it should be defined as 'work which visibly quickens the breath and opens the pores,' sufficiently indicates the idea intended. The purpose of a definition was ultimately effected by giving an example. It was to be 'tread-wheel, crank, capstan, stonebreaking, or other like kind of hard bodily labour.'

Shortly before the Prisons Bill 1876 and 1877 was introduced, the Secretary of State did me the honour to consult me as to whether the period of three months for compulsory 'first-class' hard labour should be shortened. I proposed that it should be shortened to one month, so that all the rest of the sentence might be employed on industrial labour. This amendment was introduced into the bills of 1876 and 1877, and is now the rule of all prisons.

There are many persons, and I am one, who in the abstract dislike and object to this purely penal labour, but I know that it has its uses, and in this as in many other matters there is only a choice of difficulties. Prisoners who are in for only a few days, and who know of no sedentary or indoor trade which can be carried on in the prison-for instance, agricultural labourers, porters, dealers, &c.-have no time to learn or to carry on industrial work, and must therefore either be idle or doing some pretence of work, or else be employed on that which is merely mechanical, and if this sort of labour is enforced only for a short period the disadvantage to the prisoner is practically reduced to nothing. It is also in actual practice turned to account as a spur to good conduct for those who are in prison long enough, by holding out the prospect of relief from it as a reward for conformity to the rules and orders.