The importance of the subjects handled in this volume requires no demonstration. Already, and for long, the treatment of them has naturally engaged the sympathetic study of philanthropists, and more recently it has attracted the earnest attention of scientific inquirers. Hitherto, however, the results have been far from satisfactory; and there is ample room for further discussion, especially from the standpoint of a thoroughly practical man with large experience both of criminals and of the social conditions that breed them.

Nowadays there is a growing sense of social interdependence; there is a more general and a more definitely realized aim to elevate the condition of the less fortunate of our fellow-citizens; there are express efforts of scientific investigators to discover a firm basis for practical reforms; and practical reforms are urgent. Such tendencies of thought and feeling may be expected to go far to ensure a warm welcome to this volume.

Dr. Devon’s book is executed on a breadth of scale never before attempted. It has three distinct parts: The Criminal; Common Factors in the Causation of Crime; The Treatment of the Criminal. His exposition is perfectly clear; he sees precisely, and he states directly, simply, and definitely what he sees and what he thinks about it, very frequently driving home a point with epigrammatic force. If he throws overboard unceremoniously what he regards as mere lumber accumulated by the industry of speculation divorced from experience; if he betrays some impatience with existing theories and systems; if he advances his own views with confidence—the handling is at any rate piquant, and brings the matter promptly to a head.

We are supposed to have travelled far from the mediÆval brutality of prison life, but have the changes not been superficial rather than deep? Setting aside the catalogue of minor regulations and regarding the broad spirit of prison life, one cannot but recognize that the conditions still prevailing have much in common with the past. If we look for the really essential changes during a hundred years, we find just these: (1) a surface cleanliness of apparent perfection; (2) conversation, prison visits, and arrangements tending towards a decent sociability between prisoners and prisoners and between prisoners and the public reduced and rendered difficult by multitudinous bye-laws. On the one hand, a cleanliness obtainable only by irritating industry disproportionate to its proper value; on the other hand, a reduction of such facilities as are most likely to prevent a prisoner from degenerating to a social alien, an automatic machine, or a lunatic.The after-effects of a long sojourn in prison are not readily realizable: it would require a very lively imagination to picture the life and its inherent possibilities. The fact that some prisoners do manage to get through their existence without falling into despair may be taken rather as a tribute to the chances of exception confounding rule than as a proof of conversion to virtue through punishment. It is too much to expect that an ordinary man that has been incarcerated for a period of seven, or five, or even three years, can become, on his liberation, once more a “respectable” member of society. His spirit has been cowed; his self-respect has been annihilated; he has been disqualified for reabsorption in the community; he has been prepared to gravitate once more towards crime and prison.

Another unfortunate aspect is the position of the prison warder. Apart from the care of those under him, he is subject to so much personal discipline—is so much the slave of “Rules”—that his life often becomes little superior to that of his charges. In point of social origin or of intellectual attainments he is not inferior to the ordinary policeman; but, while the policeman is taught by society, the warder spends most of his time in an atmosphere of degradation, fatal both to character and to intellect.

We are pretty well agreed that consideration and sympathy should be extended to the first offender, except in case of sheer brutality—and, as Dr. Devon points out, even a man that commits an act of brutality is not necessarily a brute—for the first offender is usually the victim of “accidental misconduct.” In the case of the habitual offender, who returns to prison time after time for various transgressions, it would seem judicious to keep him permanently from actual freedom, but to treat him more as a diseased and positively dangerous man than as a noxious animal. At any rate, first offenders should not be herded together with case-hardened criminals.

Dr. Devon argues stoutly for the liberation of prisoners when responsible citizens come forward to undertake for necessary periods the guardianship and care of them. On this point it is important to note his precise position: it is not for a moment to be thought that he advocates any reckless liberation of scoundrels upon society. Let us see his actual words: “Unconditional liberation has ended in disaster to all concerned. Conditional liberation can only be expected to produce good results if the conditions are reasonable.... A prison ought merely to be a place of detention in which offenders are placed till some proper provision is made for their supervision and means of livelihood in the community.... The prison in which they would be placed would not be a reformatory institution where all sorts of futile experiments would be made, but simply a place of detention in which they would be required each to attend on himself until he had made up his mind to accept the greater degree of liberty implied in life outside. The door of his cell would be opened to let him out when he had reached this conclusion; but it would not be opened to let him out, as at present, to play a game of hare and hounds with the police.” The argument hinges on the conditions.

Side by side with this, the State might well note the advantage of pursuing the scheme of letting first offenders out on probation; giving them guidance and help in welldoing, and impressing upon them the inevitable consequence of restraint in case of violation of the law. In this way the transgressor—unless he be of the stuff of which arrant evildoers are made—seems more likely to feel repentance instead of remorse. He is shown clearly the power and the certainty of the law; and at the same time he avoids the stain a prison life must inevitably have left, even though the imprisonment had been of a comparatively short duration.

Dr. Devon expounds, with irresistible logic, an argument in favour of a proper training of the class most in need of it. It must not be forgotten that ignorance cannot be expected to reason, and that poverty is heavily handicapped. Many offenders do evil simply because they have never known good. To punish these with blind and brutish vehemence is only a little less callous than ill-treatment of mental derelicts and little children. The principal aims of a prison system are presumably to punish offenders and to induce them not to offend again. In neither case can the present system be regarded as successful: it provides neither a proper punishment nor an effective deterrent. That the influence is brutalising cannot be ignored: the savage become bestial, the refined become tragically shamed outcasts.

It is not to be anticipated that Dr. Devon will at all points and at once conciliate agreement. Probably he is the last man to expect it. Perhaps it is even undesirable that his views should be accepted without keen discussion. But Dr. Devon is a seasoned warrior, well accustomed to fight his own battles; and no man is readier to acknowledge frankly a sound criticism.

Dr. Devon begins and ends on the same note: absolute necessity for the “recognition of social conditions as they exist.” Yes, “as they exist”; and not otherwise. His official position as medical officer of a large prison for more than half a generation, and a long experience as one of the examiners for the Crown for criminal cases in the West of Scotland, give him a right to a hearing on the medical and official aspects of the subject. There have been other writers that could claim official knowledge of the subject but Dr. Devon’s qualifications on the social side are exceptional. He was helping to earn his own living before he was eleven, and his knowledge of the conditions of life among the working class has not been acquired from the outside. He had a practical acquaintanceship with the work of the unskilled labourer and of the artisan before he began the study of medicine; and his professional life, spent mainly in the poorhouse and the prison, has given him opportunities for outside observation of conditions with which he had had an earlier and more intimate acquaintance. He has been emphatically a man of the people, going in and out among his fellow-citizens of all classes for many years—lecturing, sharing confidences, advising and counselling every day, and, in a word, familiarising himself with every aspect of the diversified social life around him; an incalculable advantage when utilized by a keen intellect and a sympathetic heart.

It will be found, then, that he has brought together the two factors of the problem—the Criminal and Society—with a solvent power beyond any previous effort. I believe that his book is the most illuminating and the wisest that has ever been written on the subject.