“As to the accusation of lavishness and extravagance in the expenditure of the Penitentiary, such a statement disappears before an honest examination of the facts ; for to sustain it, our detractors affect not to take into consideration that nearly a fourth of the sums voted under the name of Penitentiary is expended at Rockwood for the benefit of another institution. In other words, they charge against the current expenditure of the Penitentiary the entire outlay for the erection of vast and costly buildings for the use of another, and, to all intents and purposes, entirely distinct and separate institution. The Provincial Penitentiary is neither the least costly of institutions of the class, nor is it, on the other hand, amongst the more costly; it ranks, in fact, as will be shown, amongst those that are most economically managed. The question of cost will be considered hereafter, with statistical information taken from official documents.
The Mercury has a pet argument, which is repeated by him very often as a masterpiece of cleverness, I suppose. Here it is:—
“prison and reformatory management, together with prison inspection, entail upon the Province burdens amounting to $155,612 03.”
It is a good deal, but it is not all. All the asylums, hospitals, prisons and reformatories, under the inspection of the board , do cost a great deal more than that sum; and still it is no argument against the board. One thing may cost a large sum and be cheap; another thing may cost a sum, small in itself, and yet be very dear. The support of indigent and dangerous classes is everywhere a very heavy burden upon society, but it is an unavoidable one. I am really astonished at the short-sightedness of the writer of the Mercury on this point if, instead of expressing the above-mentioned sum in dollars, he had done it in farthings, he would have gathered such figures as to astonish every one of his readers disposed to be satisfied with his argument as it stands.
The Inspectors, it is said, do not give enough of detailed information in their reports, and those reports are not distributed widely enough. The answer to that charge is as simple as it is conclusive. The Inspectors have no control whatever in the printing and distributing of their reports, which are so printed and distributed under the supervision of the Printing Committee of the House of Assembly. No matter how concise are the appendices of those reports, where the details of information are to be found, they are always curtailed for the printers. Furthermore, it would appear that the British American, who utters that complaint, is, after all, very little interested in the question, as he is always asking questions, the answers to which are given, at length and in print, in reports evidently in his possession. It will be seen, hereafter, that the printing of Provincial Statutes, in full, has had a small influence on his knowledge of the questions he undertakes to expound.
In relation to the increase of the salaries of officers and guards of the Penitentiary, and of creating new offices, the answer is, that the Inspectors have no power to do it, and have in fact not done it. The salaries were, indeed, increased to the extent of nearly a fourth of the whole, several years before the appointment of our Board; and what those able and practical writers believe, in their conscience I suppose, to be a discovery, is nothing more than a display of ignorance.
On that score the editor of the British American puts on his best appearance and lets out a little of his constitutional knowledge. After having said, in the number of the 30th November last :—
“The additions made to the salaries of the guards by the Inspectors, apparently without any a authority, represents an annual expenditure of $6,720. He adds, on the 1st December. "Possibly there may be some authority which does not appear on the face of the statutes, for the deviations we have noted from the statutory provisions ; but we know of no authority, except Parliament itself, which has a right to override the enactments of ” an act of Parliament.‘”
For the peace of mind of the dutiful watchman of public interest and parliamentary privileges, I can happily inform him that the increase of salaries alluded to was ordered by His Excellency the Governor in Council, agreeably with the dispositions of the Act 18th Vic, chap. 89, (1855,) which is commonly called the Percentage Act . .
So the editor of the British American can enjoy a comparatively comfortable sleep! True, these horrid Inspectors do hold offices coveted by others; but they are not guilty of the usurpation of the powers of either the Parliament or the Executive.
As far as the number of subordinate officers is concerned, and the aggregate amount of their salaries, including the percentage, it has always been brought within the letter and intention of the law. True, the number of employes called guards is apparently more numerous, but. the number of a superior class, called keepers, is much less than allowed by the law —the transfer from one class to another less paid being in the interest of the institution. Astonishment is expressed at the increase of the salary of the Inspectors, as compared with that of the former Penitentiary Inspectors, who had nothing else to do than to look after the Penitentiary but the appointment of the present Board is not made in virtue of the Penitentiary Act alone, but agreeably to the Aet 20th Vic. chap. 28th. Moreover, the subsection on which the British American (the writer of the Mercury being a little wiser or more elevated in the estimation of himself, does not object to the salary of the Inspectors) bases his argument, has been formally repealed by an act of Parliament.
But the most astonishing of all those accusations, perhaps, is that to which the Mercury, in his issue of the 9th January, gives a form in the following terms :—
“We cut off all charges for materials and labor on account of the asylum at Rockwood, because the buildings in progress there afford one of the strongest illustrations of the waste and folly which have disgraced the management of the Board. Whatever fate awaits them, the Rockwood Asylum will be a lasting monument of their recklessness or incompetence. Year after year it has absorbed large sums. There is, however, absolutely no necessity for it; from its inception to this day it has been a job that would be ludicrous but for its costliness. The Inspectors cannot but be aware that for the accommodation of the insane prisoners, a ward of the Penitentiary would be ample; yet these buildings have been allowed to go on, year after year, although their inutility for Penitentiary purposes has been notorious from the outset. To reach the truth of the credit side of the amount, even approximatively, the $35,050.90g which are charged as for the Rockwood buildings must be transferred to the debit side, as representing so much materials and labor thrown away—literally wasted, thanks to these vigilant inspectors.”
Ignorance and blundering are decidedly getting the better of bad faith in this passage, which evidently proves that one may have the venom of the serpent without its wisdom.
The erection of the Rockwood buildings, proclaimed by the writer to be unnecessary, ludicrous and foolish, owes its origin not to Inspectors, recent or ancient, not to the Executive Government, but to the will of the three branches of the Legislature, as expressed in an Act of Parliament passed in 1857, and embodied in Revised Statutes of Canada, chapter 108. In chapter 111 are contained the legal dispositions authorising convict labor to be employed in erecting the Rockwood buildings, and in the chapters already mentioned, and the chapters 109 and 110, is prescribed what is to be done with that lasting monument of the recklessness or incompetence of the Inspectors.
At the time of the organization of the present Board of Inspectors (in December 1859), the plans of the Rockwood Asylum, prepared by an able architect and approved by distinguished alienists, had been sanctioned by the Governor in Council, and the work was already in progress. Since that time all the sums expended at Rockwood have been voted by Parliament for that very purpose. The Inspectors have no more part in any censure that may be passed on the Rockwood buildings than in the eulogiums pronounced on them by the American Journal of Insanity, (page 240 of the XIX vol.), the highest authority among periodicals on the subject on this continent. All that the Inspectors have had to do with the work has been to render the cost of those buildings (costly in their nature) as little as possible, and, on that point, they have saved on a single item several thousand dollars, by a well-timed and well-directed alteration in the specifications of materials.
As, therefore, the Inspectors have only acted in obedience to the laws, and the orders of their superiors in this affair, it is only just and proper that the Mercury should restore to the credit side of our balance sheet (for the year mentioned) that sum of $35,050 90 which has been so unmercifully cut off by him be transferred to the debit side.
…
It is with such statements, and something added to them, compared with exaggerated deficits for our Penitentiary, that our detractors are arguing against the present Prison Board. If it was only an error it could be pardoned very easily; but what must one think of men like the writers of the Mercury, for instance, who, after having been shewn the exact truth, after having seen clearly the untruthfulness of their former statements, still repeat them, and continue, notwithstanding, precisely the same arguments for week after week ? I leave it to the conscience of honest people to frame the answer.
The same writer of the Mercury, feeling, after all, the weakness of such arguments, has tried to operate a diversion by accusing us of what he calls cooking accounts, by this is meant attempting to make people believe that the Provincial Penitentiary defrays its expenses out of convict labor, which is exactly the reverse of all we have thought and said on the question. In order to induce his readers to give credit to his assertion, he tries to bring the Board in contradiction with the Auditor General’s accounts, by contrasting the administrative expose of the worth of the labor performed at the Public Works, entrusted to the authorities of the Penitentiary, and the balance-sheet published in the Public Accounts; without reflecting that the said balance-sheet is exactly the same as the one published in the very same report of the Board, which he quotes.
Those two pieces of information given by the Inspectors, in the same report (1862), at pages 21 and 183 of the French, 21 and 184 of the English copy, are simply the completion of one another. The first shows how many days of labor have been employed on public works, and the value of such labor, besides the number of days of labor on contracts, for which cash has been received. The second is the simple summary of cash transactions, in account current with the Province.
The administrative expose of page 21 is as fair and as candid as can be; the balance-sheet of page 184 is also perfectly correct, so correct that the Auditor General has published it, in the second part of the Public Accounts, page 92, with the simple alteration of changing the place of one item, on the same side.
The British American discusses the prices of 40 cents and 50 cents a day, affixed to the labor of our best working convicts, and, to show that we are not justifiable in making it so high, he says:—
“The highest contract price for convicts in the Penitentiary, that we heard of, is 35 cents per day.”
The only thing I can say is, that any one attempting to discuss such questions with the knowledge of what he has heard of, must necessarily commit many blunders, as we have already proved to be the case with the British American. For his information, then, we convey the intelligence that there have been at the Penitentiary several contracts at 40c, one at 45c, one at 50c. and one at 54 cents.
Let us now cast a look on the question of receipts and expenditure, beginning with the latter, in order to know whether there is or is not lavishness and gross mismanagement, as alleged by our detractors.
To facilitate the examination, it is necessary to classify the expenditure under different heads, namely: 1st, salaries; 2nd, provisions; 3rd, clothing and bedding; 4th, fuel and light; 5th, building and repairs; 6th, miscellaneous, which includes, as well understood, a variety of small items not comprised in any of the others.
It is well to explain, at first, that the Inspectors have no control whatever over the salaries; that they have scarcely any control over the supply contracts, which are given out by public advertisement; that, in fact, with very little exception, the responsibility of the Board is confined to the surveillance of the proper usage and consumption of articles.
It would be altogether too long to enter into a full discussion of the multifarious questions connected with feeding and clothing prisoners, and in warming, lighting and otherwise providing such institutions as penitentiaries, and to consider all that in relation with the climate, situation and habits of the people. The simplest way of dealing with the question will be to show, by figures taken from the proper sources, that, notwithstanding many disadvantages, the Provincial Penitentiary occupies a distinguished rank amongst institutions of the same nature; for I suppose that our adversaries do not mean to say that all penitentiaries are illmanaged, and that they ought to be appointed Inspectors of all of them.
I have no complete series of reports of the American prisons, so I make use of the most recent in my possession, giving, of course, the year and the mean annual population: that mean is established, for all in the same way, by adding the numbers at the beginning and end of the year and dividing by two.
The Provincial Penitentiary is the only one in which lunatics of different kinds are kept, fed, &c, &c. It has been the case for several years at Kingston. All the male lunatics of the so-called criminal asylum of Rockwood have been maintained out of the Penitentiary stores; it was only during the year 1862 that, a part of the new buildings at Rockwood having been temporarily tied up, the crowding of the insane ward at the Penitentiary was a little relieved. I give this information to explain to the reader that in the mean population of the Provincial Penitentiary, for 1862, are included 44 male lunatics, who, while they give no work, being added to the number of consumers, must necessarily be counted with them. This is a very important element in the calculation, which has been completely, overlooked by sundry writers on the subject the more so that, for several years past, the mean number of male lunatics so kept to the cost of the Penitentiary has been over sixty.”
– Letter of Mr. J. C. Taché, The Board of Inspectors of Asylums, Prisons and Hospitals and ITS ACCUSERS. Reprinted from the ‘Morning Chronicle.’ Quebec, 1864. p. 8-13.
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