CONVICT (from the Latin) means a person convicted of any criminal charge. The term came by custom to be applied to persons subject to punishment for the more seri ous class of offenses, and of late its meaning has become almost entirely restricted to the class of criminals who used to be transported to the distant colonies of Britain. These criminals are now condemned to penal servitude for longer or shorter periods, and are usually spoken of as convicts under penal discipline, while offenders sentenced to short periods of detention in the ordinary jails are called prisoners. The convicts are confined in special C. establishments in different parts of the United Kingdom. The earlier history of the treatment of these. criminals will be found under the head TRANSPORTATION. In the year 1840, the system of transportation to the chief penal colony, New South Wales, was suspended. Grave doubts had become prevalent as to the efficiency of the system, and all questions created by these doubts were solved by the refusal of the colonies to receive convicts, and the impossibility of disposing of them abroad, except in trifling numbers to the small district of western Australia. It was thus necessary to solve the question how these convicts could be treated at home in a manner consistent with the objects of punishment—the protection of the commu nity, and the reformation of the offender to the extent to which that is practicable. Before this necessity occurred, considerable progress had been made in prison discipline by arrangements which, without subjecting criminals to absolute silence or absolute solitude, separated them from the contaminating society of each other. It was natu rally supposed that a system found beneficial for ordinary prisoners would suit convicts. But it was discovered that the discipline beneficially applied during a short period of imprisonment, could not be endured for a long period without physical and mental deterioration; and that the depression and anxiety created by their long sentences— sometimes for twenty years, and sometimes for life—made convicts break down under it within the period for which it could be quite easily endured by ordinary prisoners. It is a fixed principle of prison discipline, that while punishment may be made to any extent disagreeable, it is never to be permitted, if possible, to injure either the body or the mind. It was found unsafe to subject male convicts to separate imprisonment for more than eight months; females, owing to some constitutional difference, are found to bear it without detriment for four months longer. At the end of eight months,
then, or a year, as the case may be, the C. is gradually, so far as is consistent with safe custody, brought back into the habits of the freer population. It is usual to call the early stage of their discipline the probationary, and the later the reformatory. In the latter, they are associated under precautions and careful inspection; and are occu pied in trades in which they may make their bread when free. Public works, such as the breakwater, quarries, and fortress at Portland, and the works at Chatham and Portsmouth, afford a valuable outlet for C. labor. In such establishments may be seen a thousand men or more, with hammers, mattocks, axes, and all descriptions of for midable tools, working under the eye of their warders as quietly and systematically as ordinary laborers. There are establishments where, as far as possible, the same sys tem is administered to females—as at Woking and the general prison for Scotland at Perth. The great hold by which the convicts are kept in order is the system poit larly called " the mark system," under which, by steady application to work, convicts earn a remission of part of their sentence. Conduct is not taken into account in assigning these marks, but on the occasion of any specific misconduct a proportion of earned and registered marks is forfeited. The present C. establishments of the United Kingdom are: In England—Dartmoor, in which the great proportion are invalids; Port land, Portsmouth, Chatham, and Borstal, for males, in each of which there are public works; Pentonville, Parkhurst, Wormwood Scrubs, and Brixton, for males; Woking and Millbank. for males and females: and Fulham, for females. In Scotland, the C. department of the general prison at Perth is occupied by a limited number of males for the first nine months of their sentence (after which they go to public works prisons in England). and by females for the whole period. In Ireland—Spike island (with forts Camden and Carlyle) and Lusk for males; and Mountjoy for males and females. The number of convicts in England on 31st March, 1877, was—males, 8.843; females, 1251: Scotland (1876), males, 55; females, 234: Ireland (1876), males, 891; females, 263: West ern Australia, 350.