PRISON DISCIPLINE.

This is a department of jurisprudence and administrative science which in later times has totally changed its character, and requires a new method of treatment. From being matter of mere speculation, it has become matter of practice and of induction from observed facts. In earlier editions of the Encyclopaedia it was treated by one of those accomplished and sagacious inquirers, whose able exposure of existing defects, produced the many experiments and improvements which supply the materials of this exposition. Mr Mill found no system of prison discipline acknowledged and acted on, although Howard, Beccaria, and Bentham had preceded him in endeavouring to establish such a system. Hence he thought it necessary to go back to the first principles of punishment, and realize them into rules of practice for the future guidance of mankind. Such a method any man who earnestly threw himself into the subject and felt himself capable of handling it was then quite entitled to adopt, because the practices he had to censure were not caused by false doctrines about prison discipline, but by a general neglect among mankind to search for such doctrines at all, and a consequent dereliction of the whole practice of punishment to accident, routine, or the interests and passions of those invested with power.

But of late years the efforts of the leaders of civilization have borne with practical effect on this branch of the science of government. However they may be open to criticism as more or less excellent or imperfect, the various methods of punishment have been carefully and conscientiously studied. And this study has not been merely theoretical, but has been a continuous commentary on practice and its results, those having most to do with the actual administration of punishment having been the fullest expounders of its rules, through parliamentary reports and other published statements. Hence it would be unbecoming, were it profitable, at this time to embark in pure theories of prison discipline. It is apprehended that it will be more acceptable to tell what has been done by the leaders of prison reform, and to give an account of the results of their efforts, so far as these can be ascertained.

It is proper, in the first place, briefly to note the extent of the field now occupied by the term prison discipline. It has been ever widening, and now nearly occupies every department of punishment in this country and throughout civilized Europe. Such other corporal punishments as are now inflicted are additions to the punishment of imprisonment. Where the law can be satisfied by a forfeiture of money or property, imprisonment is still the alternative by which it is extorted. Where, as in the case of the soldier, chastisement is spoken of as a degrading punishment which it is desirable to supersede, imprisonment appears as the only available alternative. Forced labour of any kind is but a form of imprisonment. Simple banishment is now almost unknown. With transportation imprisonment was always closely co-operative, as the means of detention until the convict was removed, and as the sanction for keeping him in order in the penal colony. Since transportation has been virtually abolished as a punishment, imprisonment has received a corresponding enlargement. The penal serf is a prisoner, although in certain stages of his long punishment he is permitted to spend a portion of each day in the open air. Nay further, reformation having become a distinct object of penal discipline, has suggested the establishment for the young of institutions in which the reformatory prevails far above the penal element; but these are at the same time institutions of restraint or imprisonment. There is no broad line of distinction between reformatories and prisons, and the nature and management of both come naturally under the head of "Prison Discipline." There remains only capital punishment, now fortunately so rare. Here, too, the prison is necessarily brought into use, since the criminal must be kept there until he is put to death. But prison discipline has a far more important connection with capital punishment. It is admitted on all hands that the infliction of death is to be avoided wherever other means can be found of punishing with equal effect. It is to the resources of the science of prison discipline that we must look for such effective punishment; and thus it is one of the services of this science to reduce, if it should not even some day be able to supersede, a method of punishment so inimical to civilization.

The prison, as we now know it, is as entirely an institution of modern Europe as the church, the school, and the poor-house. Words occur, connected with events and customs in the ancient world, which we can only translate into modern language or thought by the use of the word "prison;" but the thing, as we now know it in the shape of the county jail or the convict prison, was then neither known nor anticipated. People were put in chains, or even locked for a time within stone walls; but systematic committal to prison as a specific punishment, in the way in which a vagrant is sentenced to thirty days, or a thief to twelve months, is a thing of which it may safely be said that no trace can be found in the practices of ancient nations which have come down to us. We are told how "the princes were wroth with Jeremiah, and smote him, and put him in prison in the house of Jonathan the scribe, for they had made that the prison." (Jer. xxxvii. 15.) This is one of the many instances occurring in Scripture where a temporary prison was found in any large house where a person could be conveniently restrained. Travellers in the East notice the same arrangement still. Systematic prisons are seldom known; but civil liberty is held cheap, and any one who is strong enough may detain a casual prisoner. Our representatives at eastern courts, finding it extremely inconvenient that they cannot get culprits of their own nation punished according to the British practice in public prisons, are accommodated with prisons of their own as a part of the ambassadorial establishment, in pursuance of the policy of orientals, which allows foreigners sojourning among them the practice of their own institutions. Though there are some instances in Scripture where the prison is spoken of as a punishment in itself, yet its proper use was that of mere temporary custody, that the prisoner might be forthcoming for ulterior purposes; and imprisonment is not laid down as a specific punishment in Leviticus or elsewhere. The imprisonment of Joseph in the king's prison until judgment should be passed on him, has been sometimes mentioned in illustration of the high civilization and just laws of the Egyptian empire. Instead of being summarily punished by the high officer whom he was charged with injuring, he was committed for trial, like a British culprit of the present day.

That the Greeks were far from having an established system of imprisonment is shown by this, that there are several words in the language which may be translated by the word prison, but which each possesses several other meanings. Anything resembling an actual prison seems chiefly to have been employed among them in detaining citizens until they paid penalties or debts to the state. They had methods of public exposure in bondage, like the stocks or pillory. Slave labour in rowing galleys, a frequent punish-