Far-right polemicist Peter Hitchens has said he'd like prisons to return to how they were in the 19th-century, and said he "doesn't believe" in rehabilitation.
With the left turning in on itself in a sea of self-flagellation and soul-searching over the merits of Johann Hari’s journalistic integrity and Ed Miliband’s stance on strikes, many stories will have slipped the net – one such is far-right firebrand Peter Hitchens’s scarcely believable views on crime and punishment, aired during a phone-in on BBC Radio Five Live on Wednesday.
He said he’d like prisons to return to how they were in the 19th-century, and said he “doesn’t believe” in rehabilitation. OK, so maybe it’s not news per se, given that it won’t have come as too big a shock, but its still quite shocking, that in 2011, someone can hold such views.
Needless to say, he’s also in favour of the death penalty.
So what would prison be like were Hitchens to have his way? Arthur George Frederick Griffiths’ “The World’s Famous Prisons: Chronicles of Newgate” notes:
“The life of a prisoner was very different from that of today’s prisons. The prisoners were treated as animals and considered less of a human because of their lawlessness.
“They were made to right the wrongs that they have committed either through ‘physical pain applied in degrading, often ferociously cruel ways, and endured mutilation, or was branded, tortured, put to death; he was mulcted in fines, deprived of liberty, or adjudged as a slave’.”
Even the infants of prisoners were degraded:
“I have lately been twice to Newgate to see after the poor prisoners who had poor little infants without clothing, or with very little and I think if you saw how small a piece of bread they are each allowed a day you would be very sorry.
“I could not help thinking, when there, what sorrow and trouble those who do wrong, and they have not the satisfaction and comfort of feeling among all their trials, that they have endeavoured to do their duty.”
Of course, life all round was grim, especially for the poor in the 19th-century, as Tristram Hunt so graphically illustrated in an article in the Mirror last October:
“Husbands were separated from wives; mothers from children.
“When Elizabeth Wyse on Christmas Day 1840 tried to spend the night with her daughter, the workhouse director dragged her from the room, locked her in the workhouse cage, and left her in solitary confinement with no coat, no bedding-straw, and no chamber pot for 24 hours.
“The following morning, she was served her fellow inmates’ cold gruel before being sent back to her soiled cage to clean it. With her hands…
“To the Victorians, the poor were deserving or unde-some to be helped, most to be condemned. This was the principle behind the workhouse – conditions had to be so appalling that the poor would put themselves through any indignity rather than seek assistance from the state.
“‘Kill me sooner than take me there,’ was what Charles Dickens’s character Betty Higden said of the workhouse. ‘Throw this pretty child under cart-horses feet and a loaded waggon, sooner than take him there. Come to us and find us all a-dying, and set a light to us all where we lie and let us all blaze away with the house into a heap of cinders sooner than move a corpse of us there!'”
Just remember who the real affront to journalism, politics and society is: not Hari, Hitchens.
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67 Responses to “Peter Hitchens: Bring back 19th-century prisons”
Dave Citizen
Quite agree Leon – that’s why I’ve come to the view that those on the left who think they can make meaningful progress while keeping the media ‘on-side’ are wasting their time – meaningful social progress is precisely what those with control over the media have gained that control to avoid! They may throw out a few crumbs for being good but real change….forget it.
mr. Sensible
The Daily Mail does what the Daily Mail does best…
Hitchin England
RT @leftfootfwd: Peter Hitchens: Bring back 19th-century prisons: http://bit.ly/jiEgfE reports @ShamikDas #NewsClub
Richard
I did not hear Peter Hitchens on the radio but I did see him on an episode of The Big Questions recently when he said that in his view prisons should be for the punishment of responsible individuals. They should be austere, clean, free of drugs and run by the prison guards not the prisoners.
Seems reasonable to me. Quite civilised actually.
He may have said on the radio that he would like prisons to be like how they were in the 19th century, I don’t know I didn’t hear it, but I find it hard to believe he said “I would like prisons to be how Arthur George Frederick Griffiths describes them in The World’s Famous Prisons: Chronicles of Newgate”.
Did he honestly say that prisoners should be treated like animals? Did he actually say they should endure mutilation?
I think this article is a bit harsh. I think it probably misrepresents Peter Hitchens and just because the author disagrees with him doesn’t mean he is an “affront to journalism”.
SuiSinal
The thing is, we give prisoners things such as TVs and the chance to earn money in prison. Why? I’m not saying treat them like animals, but can’t we outsource work no-one wants to do to them? Unpaid, naturally. They can get 3 basic meals consisting of enough to live on. You would reduce costs in running prisons, and deal with complaints with the standard answer of “You are in prison, not a holiday camp – it is to be endured, not enjoyed.” Harsh, but it might make people think twice before commiting a crime…