’Out of the present inmates of convict prisons over 40 per cent have been previously in penal servitude, viz. out of 3,046 male convicts 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 Salvation Array for Officers in charge of Corps (or Stations) is as follows:—­For Single Men:  Lieutenants, 16s. weekly; Captains, 18s. weekly.  For Single Women:  Lieutenants, 12s. weekly; Captains, 15s. weekly.  For Married Men, 27s. per week and 1s. per week for each child under 7 years of age, and 2s. per week for each child between the ages of 7 and 14.  Furnished lodgings are provided in addition.]