A deserving cases, the harshness of the Scottish Poor Law. We have shown how indiscriminate relief, even when administered by the police, and even when of the meagrest character, infallibly attracts troops of vagrants and beggars, and how its withdrawal disperses them. We have shown that, so far as the suppression of vagrancy is concerned, the severest enactments of the general law are futile, and the best results have been achieved by the milder provisions of more recent statutes at present operative in burghs; and we have given reasons for our belief that if the same provisions, still further mitigated in the case of casual offenders, were extended to the country generally, the effect, in conjunction with our proposals for the treatment of Habitual Offenders, would be to keep the evil well under control. We have made recommendations, which if carried out would, we believe, go a long way to remove existing difficulties in securing the education of gipsy and tinker children. We have endeavoured to meet the case of the working-man tramping in search of employment, by proposals aimed at deterring impostors and assisting the deserving. And finally, in connection with those waves of acute destitution which periodically arise in our large towns, we have made a recommendation which would form the basis of a system to be permanently maintained, so as to be available promptly and methodically, to meet advancing danger before it had swollen to unmanageable size. B C D We have carefully gone into the subject of Juvenile Delinquency, comparing the results of reformatory and industrial school training with those of the training undergone by the mass of our population, pointing out the great good that has been achieved, and making proposals to meet the defects which still remain to be remedied. We have endeavoured to show what might most readily be done to meet the hard case of the boy or girl debarred by reason of ill-health from reception into a reformatory, at present doomed to develop into a jail-bird-to prevent the undoing of reformatory work at its conclusion by the resumption by ex-pupils of old and evil associations, and to improve the educational and administrative efficiency of a class of institutions on which much public money is most usefully spent. And, above all, we have recorded our conviction, and the reasons for it, as to the cruel unwisdom of sending youthful offenders to prison, as tending more than any other single cause to divert their path of life into the ways of crime and pauperism. E And, finally, in respect of Habitual Inebriates of the non-criminal class, we have arrived at conclusions practically identical with those at which a Select Committee of the House of Commons and an English Departmental Committee had arrived,* and have made recommendations to give effect to them under Scottish administration and Scottish law. We have shown that in Scotland existing legislation as to habitual inebriety has remained a dead letter, for the reason that that law can be more ignored than complied with. We have pointed out the amendments necessary to enforce and to facilitate compliance with its provisions. We have recommended extensions of those provisions which, in conjunction with our other recommendations, would suffice to meet every case. We have proposed that the duty of ministerial administration should, in the case of Scotland, be transferred to that department of our Government by which it could be most economically and most efficiently carried on; and, if we have ventured to make our recommendations on the subject bold and far-reaching, it is because we find ourselves fortified in our conclusions by the outcome of two previous investigations, and because we have received abundant evidence that public opinion, in Scotland at least, is prepared to welcome a thorough legislative treatment of the subject. Before concluding, we feel bound to express our thanks to the authorities of the various localities in which we held sittings for the zealous assistance they afforded us; to the officials of the Prison Commission, the Police, and other public departments for the readiness with which they supplied us with returns involving much labour; to those in charge of the numerous public and private institutions which we visited, who without exception placed every facility for obtaining information at our disposal; and to many witnesses, some of whom must have sacrificed very valuable time in order to place before us evidence which they were pre-eminently qualified to give. The members of the Committee would like to direct special attention to the eminent services of their Chairman, who attended every meeting and drafted the Report. *Since the above was written the Report of the Departmental Committee on English Prisons has been issued, and in it the conclusions arrived at by the two Committees quoted have again been endorsed. We have also to record our special obligations to Dr Sutherland, as secretary to the A Committee, for the difficult and laborious work which he so willingly undertook in collecting and collating information and statistics and in making arrangements for the evidence to be submitted to us. With this Report we send you a copy of the Evidence and Documents on which it B is founded; and We have the honour to be, Sir, Your most obedient Servants, CHARLES CAMERON. A. B. M'HARDY. ROBERT FARQUHARSON. COLIN SCOTT MONCRIEFF. J. DOVE WILSON. J. F. SUTHERLAND. FLORA C. STEVENSON. J. F. SUTHERLAND, Secretary. 25th April 1895. DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE ON HABITUAL OFFENDERS, INEBRIATES, &c. (SCOTLAND). And to be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller, from EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE, EAST HARDING STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C.; or 1895. 7753-1.] Price 6s. 3d. |