It was, of course, almost superfluous to ask achy there are so many serving such long terms. Shanghai will not need to be told that armed robbers and kidnappers form the bulk of the long-sentence and con-denned men. When one conies to comparisons, the figures look truly alarming. It is not pos the exact total of Shanghai's Chinese population, but a conservative estimate puts it at 827,000 (men women, and children), which makes the proportion of its criminal element in the Ward Road gaol alone the largest in the world, apart from those in the detention house, the reformatory, and Chinese gals, Nor has Capt, Wahl, who has gone carefully into the matter, been able to ascertain that there is any single gaol in the world, unless it should be one very large place in Tapain, most of whose prisoners are of a different. type, which houses 0 many criminals." There is not one in England with more than a fow over 1,000. "He sat down to write one report because he was so impressed with the rapidly increasing amount of serious crime, but had to alter it because prisoners were coming in at the rate of 100
Three in a Coll A further word a8 to the overcrowding. Over-crowding undoubt-ally there is, in the sense that the proportion of convicted criminals to the population is far too heavy, but tone cannot admit that the gaol as yet is "bursting" with prisoners. Three in n coll sounds somewhat alarming, but actually it is not bad. Tels a well-established prison custom that there shall never be two men in one cell—one or three, but never two. The reasons. for this are many. "In general they are explained by the old dictum. that: two is company and three is none." For instance, it is more likely that two will be involved in a fight than that three will, and, should one be injured, there is the as a witness for the gaol ministration, So, although one sees many cells holding three prisoners, there also are many in which one lolls in solitary comfort. Admittedly, the cells offer poor enough accommodation for one man as judged by the white standard, but one could give a Chinese of the lower orders his freedom, permanent work, and pay according to his class and. then find him living in a straw or mud hovel, the cubby-hole of an unseaworthy Jorcha, a corner of his employer's workshop, a. coal-cellar, for even only under the lee of a wall, in far worse circumstances. Three in a cell ig no hardship to the people so grouped; they expect no better, and better would not have any effect, on. them. The
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