The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
Comparison of the Expenses of Schools and Prisons.
How much better is it to seek to prevent crime than to have to punish it! The foregoing facts most strikingly illustrate that truth. It is also far more economical. The following comparison of the expenditure of prisons and schools is most conclusive. It is by , Esq., of :- | |
"The expense of all prisoners, old and young, in, is about 16 guineas a-year, the expenses in England are about 241., and both these sums are altogether independent of the costly buildings in which they are lodged. The expenses in a Scotch workhouse or union-house are generally from 101. to 121. a-year, but in the industrial schools the expense of training up a boy is about 31. los., after deduct- ing the amount of his earnings. In the girls' school the expense is much smaller. . Now contrast that with the | |
81 | expense of a prisoner, especially if he goes through the usual career. A practised regular thief generally spends about 3 years in prison before he is transported. His 3 years in prison cost from 601. to 701., and his expense of transportation is variously stated, say from 1501. to 2501 Altogether it costs, say about 3001., before you have done with him; and he is not better when you have done with him, or very little better, than he is at the commencement. Now, if you send him to an ">, and keep him there for 5 years, which is much more than the usual period we are able to keep them, he would not have cost 201., and he would have been put fairly in the way of getting a living. He would have been thoroughly educated in the first principles of religion, and the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and he would have been thoroughly taught industrial habits, all of which can now be done for 201. in the case of a boy, and for 141. in the case of a girl. Com- pare this with the enormous expenditure in some of the prisons in England; for instance, in and . In the latter, every prisoner sits in a house which costs the public 601. a-year, for each cell in cost 1,2001., so that each felon confined there, boy or girl, pays a house rent of 601. a-year. Nay, the very walls that surround cost an enormous sum of money, above 100,0001., all of which was raised by voluntary assessment on the county of York." |