What shall we do with with our criminals? with an account of the prison of Valencia, and the penitentiary of Mettray

Abstract

It is now generally acknowledged that transportation as a punishment for our criminals must soon be abandoned. Our colonists, regardless of the pecuniary advantages of such a system, are no longer willing to receive within their limited population thousands of our worst convicts-men tainted with every vice, or the victims of ungovernable passions. To force such characters on colonists, many of whom have families, and naturally take as deep an interest in the moral as in the commercial condition of their adopted country, would, under ordinary circumstances, be both unjust and impolitic; but now that almost every colony is become an El Dorado, men deemed unfit to encounter the ordinary temptations of life at home, are the last that should be launched into scenes where gold is but feebly guarded, and robberies, and even murders, already so frequent. The great advantage of transportation was its deterring effect. The sentence of separation from relations and friends has produced many an agonizing shriek from the criminals in the docks and from their families in the courts. The convicts in their solitary cells, previous to embarkation, might well feel deeper remorse for their past life, when the irksomeness of hard labour and solitude was only to be changed for the privations of a long and hazardous voyage, and the separation from all they cared for, to say nothing of their undefined dread of that distant "land from whose bourn no traveller returns." A great change has now, however, taken place, and their reflections in the solitary cells are not likely to be so salutary when they know that thousands are rushing voluntarily to the same region. Their imaginations are more likely to dwell on the golden prospect before them--the bright fields open to their industry, and their peculiar talents, when liberated, or by some lucky chance they can escape at once to the diggings.

Norfolk Island, Gibraltar, and Bermuda establishments are but penitentiaries which might be conducted more efficiently and at less expense at home. The work done by the convicts at the two latter places, if useful is not indispensable. Of all our colonies Western Australia is the only one willing to receive our convicts on the present system of tickets of leave ; and as the number of criminals there will soon be very great in proportion to the population, we can scarcely expect that colony will be open to them for a longer period than will be required to establish a new system independent of transportation... [Excerpt]