in convict prisons, 1,253 had been
previously sentenced to penal servitude, 672 once, 271
twice, 196 three times, and 114 four times or more. Mr.
Secretary Churchill has referred to us the question whether,
and in what way, it would be possible to make any impression
on this roll of recidivism--this unyielding _corpus_ of
habitual crime. The problem is never absent from the minds
of those responsible for the administration of prisons and
the treatment of crime, and during recent years great
efforts have been made to improve the machinery of
assistance on discharge, fully impressed as we are with the
truth of the old French saying, "_Le difficile ce n'est pas
emprisoner un homme, c'est de le relacher_." We have tried
to avail ourselves fully of the resources offered by such
powerful agencies as the Church Army, Salvation Army, as
well as other societies who have for years operated in this
particular field of charitable effort. We recognize the
ready help given by all these agencies. No doubt by their
efforts many difficult and unpromising cases have been
rehabilitated; but after full consideration we have come to
the opinion that the task of rehabilitation in the case of
men returning to freedom after a sentence of penal servitude
is too difficult and too costly to be left entirely to
voluntary societies, unaided by any grant of public funds,
and working independently of each other at a problem where
unity of method and direction is above all things required.
Mr. Secretary Churchill, to whom these views have been
represented, at once agreed that the difficulty lay in this
question of discharge, and that the official authority,
acting in close and friendly co-operation with the voluntary
societies must take a more active part than hitherto in
controlling the passage into free life of a man emerging
from penal servitude. ... A plan is now under consideration
for establishing a Central Agency of Control for Discharged
Convicts, on which both the official and unofficial element
will be represented, with a subsidy from public funds, the
purpose of which will be to take in hand the guidance and
direction of every convict on the day of discharge' (pp. 15,
16).]

[3: See Parliamentary Blue Book [Cd. 2562].]

[4: The scale of pay in the S