Part 40 (1/2)
_EMPLOYING_ AND _REFORMING CONVICTS_.
The Author, having turned his thoughts to the Penitentiary System from its first origin, and having lately contrived a Building in which any number of persons may be kept within the reach of being inspected during every moment of their lives, and having made out, as he flatters himself, to demonstration, that the only eligible mode of managing an Establishment of such a nature, in a Building of such a construction, would be by _Contract_, has been induced to make public the following Proposal for Maintaining and Employing Convicts in general, or such of them as would otherwise be confined on board the Hulks, for 25 per cent. less than it costs Government to maintain them there at present; deducting also the average value of the work at present performed by them for the Public: upon the terms of his receiving the produce of their labour, _taking on himself the whole expence of the_ BUILDING, _fitting up and stocking_,[152] without any advance to be made by Government for that purpose, requiring only that the abatement and deduction above-mentioned shall be suspended for the first year.
[Footnote 152: All these articles taken into the account, the originally-intended Penitentiary Houses on the late Mr. Blackburne's plan, would not have cost so little as .200 per man:--for 1000 Prisoners, .200,000: exclusive of the whole _annual_ expence of maintenance, &c. to an unliquidated amount.]
Upon the above-mentioned Terms, he would engage as follows:
I. To furnish the Prisoners with a constant supply of wholesome _Food_, not limited in quant.i.ty, but adequate to each man's desires.
II. To keep them _clad_ in a state of tightness and neatness, superior to what is usual even in the Improved Prisons.
III. To keep them supplied with _separate Beds_ and Bedding, competent to their situations, and in a state of cleanliness scarcely any where conjoined with liberty.
IV. To insure to them a sufficient supply of artificial _warmth_ and _light_, whenever the season renders it necessary: and thereby save the necessity of taking them prematurely from their work, at such seasons (as in other places) as well as preserve them from suffering by the inclemency of the weather.
V. To keep constantly from them, in conformity to the practice so happily received, every kind of _strong_ and spirituous liquor; unless where ordered in the way of medicine.
VI. To maintain them in a state of inviolable, though mitigated seclusion, in _a.s.sorted_ companies, without any of those opportunities of promiscuous a.s.sociation, which in other places, disturb, if not destroy, whatever good effect can have been expected from occasional solitude.
VII. To give them an interest in their work, by allowing them a share in the produce.
VIII. To convert the prison into a _school_, and, by an extended application of the principle of _the Sunday Schools_, to return its inhabitants into the world instructed, at least as well as in ordinary schools, in the most useful branches of vulgar learning, as well as in some trade or occupation, whereby they may afterwards earn their livelihood. Extraordinary culture of extraordinary talents is not, in this point of view, worth mentioning: it would be for his own advantage to give them every instruction by which the value of their labour may be increased.
IX. To pay a penal sum for every _escape_, with or without any default of his, irresistible violence from without excepted; and this without employing _irons_ on any occasion, or in any shape.
X. To provide them with _spiritual_ and _medical_ a.s.sistants, constantly living in the midst of them, and incessantly keeping them in view.
XI. To pay a sum of money for every one who _dies_ under his care, taking thereby upon him the insurance of their lives for an ordinary premium: and that at a rate grounded on an average of the number of deaths, not among imprisoned Felons, but among persons of the same ages in a state of liberty within the Bills of Mortality.
XII. To lay for them the foundation-stone of a _provision for old age_, upon the plan of the _Annuity Societies_.
XIII. To insure to them a _livelihood_, at the expiration of their terms, by setting up a _Subsidiary Establishment_, into which all such as thought proper, should be admitted, and in which they would be continued in the exercise of the trades in which they were employed during their confinement, without any further expence to Government.
XIV. To make himself personally responsible for the reformatory efficacy of his management, and even make amends, in most instances, for any accident of its failure, by paying a sum of money for every Prisoner convicted of a Felony after his discharge, at a rate, increasing according to the number of years he had been under the Proposer's care, viz. a sum not exceeding 10_l._ if the Prisoner had been in the Penitentiary Panopticon _one_ year: not exceeding 15_l._ if _two_ years; not exceeding 20_l._ if _three_ years; not exceeding 25_l._ if _four_ years; not exceeding 30_l._ if _five_ years or upwards: such sum to be paid immediately on conviction, and to be applied to the indemnification of the persons injured by such subsequent offence, and to be equal in amount to the value of the injury, so long as it did not exceed the sums respectively above specified.
XV. To present to the Court of King's Bench, on a certain day of every Term, and afterwards print and publish, at his own expence, a Report, exhibiting, in detail, the state, not only moral and medical, but economical, of the Establishment; showing the whole profits, if any, and in what manner they arise; and then and there, as well as on any other day, upon summons from the Court, to make answer to all such questions as shall be put to him in relation thereto, not only on the part of the Court or Officer of the Crown, but, by leave of the Court, on the part of any person whatsoever; questions, the answer to which might tend to subject him to conviction, though it were for a capital crime, not excepted: treading under foot a maxim, invented by the guilty for the benefit of the guilty, and from which none but the guilty ever derived any advantage.
XVI. By neatness and cleanliness, by diversity of employment, by variety of contrivance, and above all, by that peculiarity of construction, which, without any unpleasant or hazardous vicinity, enables the whole Establishment to be inspected at a view, from a commodious and insulated room in the centre, the Prisoners remaining unconscious of their being thus observed, it should be his study to render it a spectacle such as persons of all cla.s.ses would, in the way of amus.e.m.e.nt, be curious to partake of: and that, not only on Sundays, at the time of Divine Service, but on ordinary days, at meal-times, or times of work: providing thereby a _system of superintendance, universal, unchargeable and uninterrupted_, the most effectual and _indestructible_ of all securities against abuse.
Such are the methods that have occurred to him for accomplis.h.i.+ng that identification of ”_interest with duty_,” the effectuating of which, in the person of the Governour, is declared to be one of the leading objects of the Penitentiary Act.--[19 GEO. III. ch. 74.]
The station of Gaoler is not in common account a very elevated one: the addition of Contractor has not much tendency to raise it. He little dreamt, when he first launched into the subject, that he was to become a suitor, and perhaps in vain, for such an office. But inventions unpractised might be in want of the inventor: and a situation, thus clipped of emoluments, while it was loaded with obligations, might be in want of candidates. Penetrated, therefore, with the importance of the end, he would not suffer himself to see any thing unpleasant or discreditable in the means.
_Outline of the Plan of Construction alluded to in the above Proposal._
The Building _circular_--about the size of _Ranelagh_--The Prisoners in their Cells, occupying the Circ.u.mference--The Officers, (Governor, Chaplain, Surgeon, &c.) the Centre.
By _Blinds_, and other contrivances, the Inspectors concealed (except in as far as they think fit to show themselves) from the observation of the Prisoners: hence the sentiment of a sort of invisible omnipresence.--The whole circuit reviewable with little, or, if necessary, without any change of place.
_One_ Station in the Inspection-Part affording the most perfect view of every Cell, and every part of every Cell, unless where a screen is thought fit occasionally and purposely to be interposed.