posed, which require neither money nor Acts of Parliament, and submitted for the consideration of the Home Office whether it might not be well, 1. To ask for quarterly nominal returns of licensees and supervisees from the chief constables to the criminal registrar. 2. That the registrar should keep an account of them, transferring them in his books when they move from county to county, and advertising them, with a reward, if they abscond. 3. That all photographs, except those of second convictions or of serious offences, should be put away at the end of five years, considering a small first offence expiated by five years of honest life. It is submitted for the consideration of county justices whether it might not be well, 4. To appoint a committee to examine the chief constables' returns of licensees and supervisees, and to authorise a full nominal report to the Home Office, and a short report, without names, to the public. 5. To sentence, as a general rule, all who have a previous conviction for felony, unless (say) five years have elapsed since the termination of the former sentence, to police supervision for at least three or four years, shortening the imprisonment in proportion to the term of supervision, and thus saving the rates.

DISCUSSION.

Before reading his paper, Sir WALTER CROFTON called attention to a mistake, he believed inadvertently made, in Lord Aberdare's address, and took that early opportunity of correcting it. Lord Aberdare had stated that 'Sir Walter Crofton had admitted that intermediate prisons could not be applied to England.' So far from this being the case, his opinion was that the system of intermediate prisons could and should be applied, either in England or in any other country, where a progressive system of prison discipline obtained. Lord Aberdare had evidently been misled by an inaccurate report in the Transactions of the International Prison Congress, which Sir Walter had not seen until it was bound up in a volume. What he did state in the Foreign Section of the Prison Congress, whilst giving an exposition of the Irish Convict System, was as follows:-That as, after many years of pressure upon the Government by the Social Science Association, himself, and others, the 'marks,' a better classification, reduction of gratuities and diet, refuges, and other leading features of the Irish system, had been adopted in the English convict system (a proof of which was seen by reference to the records of the Association), it was quite probable that

1

The Transactions of the Association illustrate that these and other leading principles of the Irish system were continually urged upon the Home Office by the Association and by the Law Amendment Society for adoption in England-and in a Parliamentary paper, February 17, 1864, it is shown that these recommendations were ordered to be carried out-the Director's report for 1864 testifying that this was done with great success.

at no very distant time the able head of the convict department of the Government might see his way to introduce the intermediate system, but that it might be difficult to do so at the present time, because there were large public works still uncompleted, which required his attention.

LORD ABERDARE was glad Sir Walter Crofton had made this explanation. Sir Walter had rightly attributed the error to the source he had indicated; namely, the incorrect report in the Transactions of the International Prison Congress. Reporters had so difficult a task to perform in rapidly condensing speeches, that it was not to be wondered at, when, writing as they did currente calamo, they should mistake the exact meaning or force of what was said. The wonder was that they did not fall into errors more frequently. He was glad Sir Walter considered that the improvement of the English system had done so much good; but still, for his part, he should be cautious how he turned out the sort of men just described by Colonel Du Cane into the state of comparative liberty in which they were placed in the intermediate prisons of Ireland. Where the classes of criminals and the circumstances of the country were different, he thought that the same amount of freedom in one country could not safely and necessarily be allowed in another country. At the same time he had great faith in Sir Walter Crofton, who had done great things, and would, he hoped, live to achieve still greater results.

Mr. SERJEANT Cox said Mr. Barwick Baker's paper contained statistics as to crime in Gloucestershire, and more especially in relation to police supervision, and the way in which it had operated. Now, Gloucester was a county of comparatively small population, and contained only a few very large towns. His own experience of many years in the metropolis led him to a conclusion entirely different from that arrived at by Mr. Baker. The police of London had informed him that in no case did this supervision come into operation, the practical effect of the system being that the very men who should be subject to it escaped from it by removing from one district to another. They had no settled residence. London was a place where often you did not even know the name of your next door neighbour; and if a man wished to escape detection, he had only to go down a side street, and he was out of sight and mind. Not only so, but criminals systematically changed their names. A man had his name registered as ‘John Smith,' and either a photograph was taken of him or a verbal description. If the latter, he might be described as having black eyes, bushy whiskers and large moustache, and hair of a certain colour. that man disguises himself: shaves his whiskers, takes off his moustache, and appears as another man. He also changes his name to complete the disguise. It was difficult sometimes to recognise our own friends or acquaintances when, unknown to us, they grew whiskers, or suddenly shaved them off. It was sometimes extremely difficult to identify criminals by their photographs, because, having a suspicion of what was going on, they would so twist their features during the process of photography as to entirely distort the likeness. Several of this kind of photographs had been produced to him in court, and he must say

But

that not in one case out of ten was it possible for him to trust the likeness, so great was the difference, whether caused by a dissipated course of life or simply the result of the lapse of time. He had been told by experienced policemen in London that it was impossible to devise any means by which police supervision could be carried out in the metropolis. In Gloucestershire he believed there were, if any, but very few large manufacturing towns-the big places to which professional criminals generally resorted. In dealing with questions of crime, whether by regard to prevention or punishment, it seemed to him necessary to start with a strict distinction between what he might call the accidental criminal and the professional criminal, and to deal with these two classes upon entirely different principles. The accidental criminal, who had committed a crime by some sudden impulse, and did not make crime a business, should be dealt with tenderly, and every opportunity given him to reform. As a rule a light punishment should be inflicted upon him; afterwards he should be allowed every possible latitude to enable him to regain the character and status which he had lost. As to the professional criminal, there was no hope of his reformation. He did not believe, for his part, that a professional criminal had ever yet been reformed; and for this obvious reason-a professional criminal did not consider crime a moral wrong. He looked upon it as a business, conducting it as a lawyer did his business, with skill, and priding himself on his extreme cleverness. It was, therefore, necessary to draw a distinction between criminals that might be properly called accidental, and those who follow crime as a profession. In the counties the great mass of the criminals belonged to the accidental class. Those who made crime a business, probably with the exception of poachers, invariably went to the very large centres of population. He had found a most striking proof of that fact in his own neighbourhood (Hendon), only ten miles from London. He had lived there twenty years, and was chairman of one of the largest divisions of the county, containing 60,000 inhabitants. In the whole of that division the larcenies did not average ten in a year, and in the whole of that twenty years there had only been two cases of burglary. Everybody asked how it was that Hendon, being in the immediate neighbourhood of London, could be so safe. The reason was that the people there were very well off. There was no lack of employment, the difficulty being to get labourers. But if any persons had a tendency to pursue crime as a profession. 'like a species of Jack Sheppards,' with the excitement and ardour which render the pursuit of game a source of pleasure to the sportsman, they went to London, because there they could carry on their depredations with safety, exempt from the supervision which might be applied to them in the country. What applied to a place ten miles from London would surely apply still more to the county of Gloucester. Mr. Baker had given statistics to show how comparatively few were the cases there which did not hold out hope of reformation. But it was not unlikely that very few of the criminals in Gloucester were professional ones, excepting poachers. They were no doubt mostly of the accidental class, the majority of whom would, he hoped, be reformed. The rule he always observed

on the bench before sentencing a prisoner was to ascertain, if possible, from his history, whether he was an accidental or a professional criminal. If the former, then he inquired whether it was the prisoner's first offence; and this being so, he gave him every possible chance of reforming his character. It was labour wasted to attempt to reform the professional criminal. Police supervision, unless carried out in all cases, seemed to do more harm than good. The police in the country had informed him that it had the effect of annoying and vexing the accidental criminal. Though he wished to forget his past offences and reform, he was required to go to the police station every month and report himself, and these visits kept alive a feeling of degradation. That was the very class of men who should be allowed to forget his crimes, and not be forcibly reminded of them. Not so with the other class, over whom a vigilant superintendence was required, so that the police might know where they were to-day, and where they would be to-morrow. But, unfortunately, this supervision could not be applied to the very class the professional thieves-for whom it was specially intended, because, if they happen to be in a county, they could avoid it by going to London, Birmingham, or any other of the great centres where thieves congregate. After a long experience in the administration of justice, and hearing the testimony of the gaoler at Portsmouth, and of the most intelligent police in London, whom he had made a point of questioning on the subject, he had, he was sorry to say, come to the conclusion that police supervision was perfectly useless. So far as it operated, it was bad. Mr. Baker had stated in his paper that, according to statistics he quoted, certain counties did not apply enough police supervision, as compared with others, and that He could not understand they put it in force only in certain cases. that, because it must arise that, in certain counties, there were not so Was it Mr. Baker's conclusion many second offenders as first ones. that, in all those counties where the proportion of persons sentenced to police supervision was so small, the magistrate or judge did not carry out the law more or less? He could not suppose that to be the conclusion, since the duty imposed upon the magistrate or judge was so clearly laid down in the Act. When the Act was first passed, and he ordered prisoners to supervision after the expiration of their sentences, one man inquired what the five years' supervision really meant, and he could not really tell him what it did mean. With regard to remedy he was not prepared to suggest one, for he could not see in what way the law was to be improved so as to bring the professional class under public supervision in large places, while, as regarded small places, he suspected there were no persons to whom it could properly apply. With reference to the general operation of the Acts, he had every respect for them. He should, however, like to see one defect remedied. There was no medium between two years' imprisonment and five years' penal servitude. He had no doubt every chairman of quarter sessions and every judge of assizes had experienced the inconvenience caused by that wide distinction, because there were some offences which, though they merited more than two years' imprisonment, yet did not quite deserve penal servitude for five years. As to the 14th clause, affecting

women and children, it was very remarkable that it had been almost entirely a dead letter, for in all his experience he did not recollect a single instance in which it had been carried out, and he could hardly recall a case in which it was possible to have carried it into effect. Magistrates would, he believed, all agree as to the excessive difficulty which they had experienced in applying the Industrial Schools Act with justice to the public, and with real benefit to the parents of the children; for it was a well-known fact that the parents often used the Industrial Schools Act, and also before that was passed the Reformatories Act, for the purpose of getting rid of their children. On more than one occasion a woman had said to him in the court, 'It is a blessed thing to have a son a thief; for here is my neighbour who has had her son taken care of. He is taught to read and write; he is fed and clothed, and she is so far relieved; while my poor boy, because he is honest, is walking about without shoes to his feet.' The clauses giving power to magistrates to take the evidence of receivers of stolen property had worked perfectly, and he therefore fully approved of them.

LORD ABERDARE said that remarks had not infrequently been made elsewhere, questioning the practical utility of observations on a subject of this kind. For his own part, he should like an answer to be given to this inquiry: Where, in England at any rate, if not on the Continent, could be found three gentlemen more capable of addressing, with weight and profit, any assembly on the subject then under consideration than Colonel Du Cane, Sir Walter Crofton, and Mr. Barwick Baker? Colonel Du Cane had an extended experience both at home and abroad, and those members of the association who had had the pleasure of listening to his address on the Repression of Crime would be wiser for it. Sir Walter Crofton was one of the most experienced, as well as one of the most successful prison reformers, and Mr. Baker had consecrated a long life of usefulness to the reformation of juvenile offenders and the diminution of crime. They were three gentlemen practically acquainted with the subject. The question immediately before the section was that of suppression of criminals. The speaker, who had just sat down, expressed the opinion that supervision was useless. He so far agreed with Mr. Serjeant Cox that there were extreme difficulties encountered by the police in following criminals in London; but he could not agree with him, so far as the country was concerned. He had not had Mr. Serjeant Cox's great experience, but he had been for many years chairman of the Quarter Sessions in Glamorganshire, where, in the centres of population, a considerable number of persons were returned to the Home Office as belonging to the class who got their livelihood by fradulent proceedings. The testimony of the chief constables was that the power of suppression had been exercised with great advantage, and had enabled them to break up gangs of thieves. He had also received assurances from a considerable number of persons, that the Act had worked beneficially in that respect. No doubt it was difficult, in an enormous city like London, to follow a criminal under supervision from one place to another. In the Metropolis it may be partially adopted, but he could not see what harm it did. In his opening address, he said that one of the most useful provisions of the

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