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Sudhar Ghar,
Alexander Maconochie and Jail Reforms
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An insight
into the work of 18th century reformer, who achieved
a lot, left behind a legacy, which has borne fruit three
centuries later. |
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 The gates of the
prison walls in
Punjab and
India, display a huge billboard, Sudhar Ghar --Correction
Home. Contrast this to the remark of a member of the planning
commission who had studied Tihar jail in Delhi. He is reported to
have remarked that the prisoners at Tihar were doing their PhD in
crime. Tihar was breeding criminals, not reformed citizens. Save for
the efforts of Ms. Kiran Bedi, that too during her tenure as the
prison chief, when pathbreaking changes were initiated, Tihar like
all other prisons is back to ‘normal’.
What AMC,
Australia has
done is to bring into focus the work of Alexander Maconochie on
prison reforms.
Alexander
Maconochie was born in
Edinburgh on 11
February 1787. By 1804 he was a midshipman in the Royal Navy. He was
a lieutenant on the brig Grasshopper when it was wrecked on
Christmas Eve 1811 off the Dutch coast and, along with everyone else
on board, was taken prisoner and handed over to the French. They
were forced to march in the cold winter from Holland to Verdun, and
suffered more than two years’ misery as prisoners of war. This was Maconochie’s one traumatic taste of life in prison, and he never
forgot it.
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Alexander Maconochie wanted to shift the focus of penology from
punishment to reform. He argued that punishment on its own was a
socially empty act without checks built into it, and saw no
sense in punishing a criminal for his past without training him
with incentives for his future. |
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Alexander
Maconochie wanted to shift the focus of penology from punishment to
reform. He argued that punishment on its own was a socially empty
act without checks built into it, and saw no sense in punishing a
criminal for his past without training him with incentives for his
future. He argued that sentences should be indefinite - the convicts
would have to earn a certain number of ‘marks’, or credits for good behaviour and hard work, before they were released. They would buy
their way out of prison with these marks. To buy, they must save.
 Hence the length
of his sentence was, within limits, up to the convict himself. Marks
could be exchanged for either goods or time. The prisoner could buy
“luxuries” with his marks from the gaol administration – extra food,
tobacco, clothing etc. Maconochie believed his Marks System would be
objective. Ideally, the convict would pay for everything beyond a
diet of bread and water with the marks he earned.
As soon as a
convict entered the system, he would begin his “Pilgrim’s Progress”
with a short harsh stretch of confinement with hard labour and
religious instruction as punishment for the past.
Nobody in
England or
America, let alone penal Australia, had tried such therapies on
convicts before. This idea of prison as a reforming institution
would not win wider acceptance until well into the twentieth
century.
Norfolk Island
under Maconochie
Maconochie saw
himself as entrusted by the British Government to reform the present
system, and came to the island with the intention of introducing a
change of regime.
The gates of the
prison compounds were opened, and the prisoners were free to wander
and frolic as long as they “showed by retiring to their quarters at
the sound of the bugle….that they might be trusted with safety”.
They were given special food, and rum, which was paid for by
Maconochie himself. Maconochie noted that “not a single
irregularity, or even anything approaching an irregularity, took
place…every man quietly returned to his ward; some even anticipated
the hour”.
Maconochie
pressed ahead with his plans for cultural and moral reform. He
wanted books, to help teach the men trades, and to instil “energy,
hopefulness in difficulty, regard and affection for our brethren in
savage life”. He also stocked the prisoners’ library with moral and
religious works, for he wanted the prisoners to think and argue
together, not rot in their cells. He included the works of
Shakespeare in his island library, feeling that theatrical training
could help convicts overcome their passions. Music was to be his
main therapy.
Maconochie
dismantled the gallows, which had stood as a permanent emblem of
dread outside the gate of the prisoners’ barracks, built churches
for Catholics and Protestants and a synagogue for the Jewish.
Maconochie’s
approach had done more to reform the
Norfolk Island
men than any amount of terror. During his administration, Maconochie
had discharged 920 of the twice-convicted prisoners to a new life in
Sydney.
By 1845 only twenty of them – a mere 2 percent - had been convicted
again.
Extracts from
Maconochie's Gentlemen by Morris N., 2002, OUP.
Photos courtesy:
Alexander Maconochie Centre website
24 September 2008
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