Report on the proceedings of the National conference on the prevention of destitution : Held at the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on June 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th, 1912. President: the Rt. Rev. the Lord Bishop of Oxford.
- National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution 1912 : London, England)
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Report on the proceedings of the National conference on the prevention of destitution : Held at the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on June 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th, 1912. President: the Rt. Rev. the Lord Bishop of Oxford. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![criminal statistics. The coincidence which they reveal between the increase or decline of crime and certain economic phenomena is impressive, to some minds conclusive. The figures, especially in simple communities, where there are not many complex or disturbing causes at work, show certain crimes rising or falling according to the price of food, which price may be regulated by causes over which the sufferers from them have no control. A further important change is to be noted. I mean the growing sense of the failure of criminal law to accomplish its chief ends—either to deter, reform or prevent. On all hands this is admitted, even by those who most freely admit the admirable work which is being done. Let me quote one of the latest dicta on the subjects by Professor Willoughby : “As a matter of fact, so far as regards the reformatory idea, there would probably be a consensus of opinion that upon the whole criminal law, as it has actually been administered in the past, was far more corrupting than elevating to the individual punished.” That may be an extreme statement. But it is now generally admitted that the influence of punishment as a deterrent from crime was enormously exaggerated in the past, and not least by those who, such as Bentham, honestly sought to reform the criminal law. To operate as an effectual deterrent the prospect of future punishment presupposes a certain degree of imagination, some power of self- restraint, and of sacrificing the present pleasure in view of the future. The normal man is capable of that. The practical problem is how to deal with the mass of more or less feeble-minded persons who are not. They might be deterred from crime if a policeman was always on the spot. They are unable to grasp clearly the idea that they may be punished to-morrow, or a few week’s hence. Yet another change ; one akin to those which I have just named. There is an almost universal disbelief in the efficacy of the prison in attaining its objects. This is no accident. The different aims in view are well nigh irreconcilable. I do not refer merely to the conflict between humanity and deterrent effects ; the difficulty of finding punishments at once dreaded and yet not injurious mentally, morally, or physically. There is the difficulty due to the presence or collection of such heterogeneous elements. “ Roughly speaking,” writes one very familiar with our prisons, “ the men and women who inhabit our prisons may be classified under five heads ; first, the feeble-minded ; second, the physical weakling ; third, the vagrant ; fourth, the casual offender ; fifth, the habitual offender .... It is certain that a tremendous difficulty arises where the discipline and routine of any one prison, however well conducted, is made to serve for the whole of the classes.” [Mr. Holmes, Hibbert Journal, October, 1910, p. 113.] It is a difficulty which we seek to surmount by splitting up the prison into several parts—the industrial school, the reformatory, the Borstal institution, the convict prison, etc. It is a difficulty which cannot be altogether overcome. I do not wish to pitch the argument too high or to speak of the bankruptcy of punishment. Its limitations are more and more recognised. I put much the same facts in another way in saying that there is a widespread sense of the imperfection of criminal law as an instrument against crime ; of its limitations, the clumsiness of it all ; the fact that the criminal law reaches only a small class of the enemies of societies ; that many evil-doers and, I may add, some of the most dangerous and powerful wholly escape its operation. I do not refer merely to the practial immunity of certain classes of offenders, owing to difficulty in obtaining evidence or the uncertainties of trials. I speak of the abstention, necessary abstention, of law from interference with actions admitted to be more mischievous to society than the bulk of the offences at](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28127717_0584.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
