#french prisons

"In February 1819 the French government established a committee to consider the question of sending prisoners overseas to a penal colony. In part its action stemmed from the increase in the number sentenced to deportation for political reasons after the colony. In part its action stemmed from the increase in the numbers sentenced to deportation for political reasons after the Restoration. It was claimed that between 1815 and 1817 the Minister of the Navy had been unsuccessful in a search for a satisfactory penal site, so that political offenders were perforce imprisoned in France. But pressure built up quickly for a penal colony as a solution not only to problems for the navy in administering the growing number of forçats in the bagnes, but also to more general problems associated with prisons in France. Indicative of this growing sentiment is a fifty-page memoir by M. Forestier, dated 14 October 1816. Forestier was an important bureaucrat, a Councillor of State of the Committee of the Navy and Colonies and later an influential member of the 1819 Committee. In his memoir he raised most of the issues around which debate would focus for decades.

“...it is also certain, that, though not adopting the American prison discipline without modification, we might borrow from it a number of its principles and its advantages. Thus every new prison which would be built according to the system of cells, would have an incontestable superiority over the present prisons. The separation of the prisoners during night, would put a stop to the most dangerous communications, and destroy one of the most active agents of corruption. We cannot imagine what objection, possibly, could be made against the system of cells, if, as we believe it to the case, the prisons built according to' this system, would not cost more than the others.* We have said that it seems to difficult to maintain absolute silence among the convicts without the assistance of corporal punishment. However, this is only an opinion, and the example of Wethersfield, where the prisoners have been governed without beating for several years, tends to prove that this severe means of discipline is not absolutely necessary. It seems to us, that the chance of success would make the trial on the part of government well worth the attempt a trial which seems to us the more reasonable, as we would be sure at least of approaching our end, in case we should not succeed entirely : thus even if public opinion should show itself decidedly hostile to corporal punishments, we would be obliged, in order to establish the law of silence, to resort to disciplinary chastisements of another nature, such as absolute solitude without labour, and a reduction of food; there is good ground to believe, that with the assistance of these latter punishments, less rigorous than the first, but nevertheless efficient, silence would be sufficiently maintained to avoid the evil of moral intercourse between the prisoners; the most important point would be, first to declare the principle of isolation and silence as a rule of discipline of the new prisons; the application of the principle would meet, perhaps with us, with more obstacles, because it would not be aided by such energetic auxiliaries; but we have no doubt, that regarding the great general end, much good would already thus be effected. Radical reformations, perhaps, would not be obtained by this imperfect system, but great corruptions would be prevented, and we would thus derive from the American system, those advantages which are the most incontestable. We believe that government would do something useful in establishing a model penitentiary, constructed upon the American plan, and governed as much as possible according to the disciplinary rules which are in force in the penitentiaries of the United States. It would be necessary that this construction, planned according to all the simplicity of the models we have brought with us, should be executed without any architectural elegance. Care should be taken to place in the penitentiary new convicts only; because if the nucleus of an old prison should suddenly be introduced into the new penitentiary, it would be difficult to submit to the severities of the new discipline, individuals accustomed to the indulgent system of our "central houses."”

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