November 25, 1922] 



NA TURE 



693 



their views, frequently at considerable length, and all 

 sorts of reasons and theories as to the classification, 

 reformation, segregation, and even extinction of 

 offenders have been promulgated. 



It is now generally accepted that there is no so-called 

 "criminal diathesis," no specially fore - ordained, 

 criminally disposed individuality. The theory of crime 

 as a form of conduct, so ably argued by the late Dr. 

 Mercier, is generally accepted. We are all potential 

 criminals, some more some less, and our tendencies to 

 different forms of law-breaking are of different potenti- 

 alities. According to our mental constitutions, physical 

 circumstances, environmental temptations, and emo- 

 tional control, are our powers of resistance to deviation 

 from the normal, in our domestic and civil life. Society 

 in self-defence has laid down a code of conduct for us 

 founded on custom, morality, and religion, this code 

 being designated as the " law." It is enforced by 

 what are called punishments, and according to the 

 gravity of the offence against these laws, these punish- 

 ments vary, from a small monetary fine through varying 

 terms of seclusion in state institutions, up to the 

 extreme penalty, the death sentence. It is in these 

 institutions — prisons — that deterrent and reformative 

 influences are brought to bear on the offender — penal 

 discipline — withthe object of preventing further offences 

 by him or her against the law. 



It is to the question of penal discipline that Dr. 

 Gordon applies herself in the work under notice. Her 

 experience as Lady Inspector of Prisons for a period of 

 thirteen years has enabled her to form her own opinion 

 on the matter, and, although her knowledge is solely 

 that of the female offender, yet in her generalisations 

 she has no hesitation in including the other sex. The 

 book is well written and interesting to read, and it 

 gives pen-pictures of several types of female, well known 

 to any one who has come in personal contact with 

 offenders of this sex. She discusses with ready pen 

 and fluent language, inebriety, prostitution, venereal 

 disease, tattooing, and the 'physical and mental char- 

 acteristics of various offenders. The different penal 

 institutions, local and convict prisons, and preventive 

 detention and Borstal institutions are all described, 

 and are all, without exception, condemned. She has 

 no good thing to say for any of them. They must all 

 be " scrapped." They are not deterrent, and they 

 do not reform. The reforms which have gradually 

 been taking place during the past forty years and are 

 still being effected in our prison treatment and discipline 

 appear to her useless and unavailing. Those who have 

 watched these reforms and seen their benefits in the 

 course of their daily life during that period may hold 

 different opinions as to their effect, but Dr. Gordon will 

 have none of it. 



NO. 2769, VOL. IIO] 



Dr. Gordon's remedial and substitutional measures 

 do not appear so definite as is her condemnation of the 

 present prison system. Teaching of trades and agri- 

 cultural and horticultural employment, which she 

 recommends, are now in vogue in convict prisons, 

 Borstal and preventive institutions, and in several of 

 the larger local prisons. It will take some time to 

 educate the British public sufficiently to allow prisoners 

 to conduct their private business from their place of 

 detention. If so, we may find some of our erring 

 financiers w-ho are now in seclusion using Wormwood 

 Scrubbs or Parkhurst as business addresses from which 

 to launch their schemes. The violent British convict 

 will, we fear, not be awed into quietude by cells of match- 

 board lining, nor will the absence of lock and key and 

 brick and mortar walls be so effective in detaining him 

 as our author appears to think ; nor will the permission 

 to have his own medical attendant brought daily to 

 his sick-bed be probably so beneficial to him as to 

 change his whole mental, moral, and physical nature. 

 Psycho-analysis may or may not become a beneficial 

 instrument in this respect. Many of her schemes 

 may be regarded as impracticable and Utopian, 

 but on one point Dr. Gordon lays marked emphasis, 

 and here we are wholly with her. Heretofore the 

 practice has been to try the prisoner for the offence 

 and to make the punishment fit the crime. The 

 punishment, on the other hand, should fit the criminal. 

 Laws are based on the assumption that the breakers of 

 them are all equally responsible, if sane. If not sane 

 there are other ways of dealing with them. But apart 

 from insanity the degree of responsibility in different 

 persons cannot be considered equal by any one who 

 has had the care and observation of the inmates of 

 prisons. Their mental outfit is of varying quality, 

 and their fitness to carry out the duties of ordinary 

 citizens, though theoretically in the eye of the law the 

 same, is found practically in many cases to be quite 

 different. That the retaliatory idea of punishment, 

 lex talionis, (though generally supposed to be a relic of 

 barbarism) has not yet been buried was clearly demon- 

 strated in a recent case where Press and public joined 

 in an outcry against the Home Secretary. 



The personal equation and mental equipment of 

 individual offenders is a point which should, in the 

 future, be more clearly defined and inquired into before 

 sentence, and this especially in the case of the young 

 offender. The Mental Deficiency Act (1913) made it 

 possible when congenital causes were demonstrable to 

 send these cases to suitable institutions, but there are 

 many now in prison who are clear cases for permanent 

 detention, though the defect is not clearly traceable 

 to congenitalism, and therefore they cannot be certified 

 under this Act. 



