They Always Come Back
- Author:
Cicely
McCall. With a Foreword by E. M. Delafield. Methuen & Co.. 7/6.
As a result of personal experience on the staffs of Holloway Prison and of the Aylesbury Borstal Institution, the writer of this book can speak with some authority on the methods of treating women prisoners and delinquent girls as she found them to exist; from the knowledge gained by training as a Psychiatric Social Worker she has formed very definite convictions as to the much better methods which might be adopted if the problem was tackled scientifically. What she has to say in her book, therefore, is eminently worth serious consideration.
She has taken as her title and motto, the bland pronouncement of a Holloway Prison Officer made to her when as a social worker in search of knowledge, she paid her first visit to the prison, and the book may be taken as her protest against the placid acceptance of a state of affairs which can be thus described with an appreciable degree of accuracy.*
To her the outstanding characteristics of the prison regime (so far as the woman prisoner is concerned) are its waste of opportunities; its lack of any attempt to study the individual delinquent for the purpose of ascertaining what is the fundamental cause of her present plight; its stereotyped outlook; its whole handling (kind, often, but lacking imagination or psychological skill), of the flotsam and jetsom of womanhood passing and repassing through the heavily locked gates. She pleads for proper case records, adequate investigation, efficient classification, a greater grip of the problem as a whole, and an increase of sensitiveness and understanding in those most closely concerned with it and she gives many examples, some very moving, some exasperating, some humorous, in support of her contentions.
The second part of the book deals with the author’s experiences as a Borstal Officer ?and here again “wasted opportunity” constitutes her theme.
In 1937, 82 per cent, of women prisoners
convicted of drunkenness were known to have served previous sentences, and amongst those convicted of other offences, 44 per cent, were rccividists.
“Aylesbury zvas full of eases which would have benefited from psychotherapy. Day after day, I saw the same types I had met and worked zvith as a psychiatric social zvorker and in child guidance clinics and in mental hospitals. But there was no psychiatrist qualified to treat them, and there was no question of their being sent to a clinic outside the Institution.’
She is oppressed by the many failures of the system as shown by the number of girls who ” come back ” on revoked licences, and she criticises the wisdom of long periods of Institution training of the present type which so often defeats its own ends. Perhaps in her generous championship of these wayward, irresponsible young women, she tends to exaggerate the possibility even under the most ideal system of effecting that transformation of life and character which alone could ensure subsequent stability of conduct; perhaps, on the other hand, she does not give honour where honour is due, for in the three year period 1933-35 out of 117 girls discharged there were 60.0 per cent, who had not been re-convicted. But no one can deny that the system as she saw it, and as she makes us see it, needs many and fundamental modifications in the light of our increased psychological knowledge. This contention is borne out by the Governor of Aylesbury herself who, deploring the number of girls from Home Office Schools sent to her in 1937, refers to the special problem they present due to the fact that ” many of them are already institutionalised, and a long ?experience of homes and schools has taught them how to get through their time with the minimum of effort and without the slightest feeling of personal responsibility.” Miss McCall’s book is so sensitively and vividly written, the narrative is so absorbingly interesting (in part, to quote from Miss Delafield’s Foreword, “so exciting”) that the mood of the writer is conveyed in a completeness that makes detached criticism difficult. It should be read for itself as a whole, and the significance of its brightly lit pictures, from the point of view of the Mental Health worker and the penal reformer, should be allowed slowly to emerge. The fact that it is the first book about women prisoners since the publication ?f Dr Mary Gordon’s ” Penal Discipline ” m 1922 (now out of print) also makes its appearance particularly welcome.
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