We recognize the
ready help given by all these agencies. No doubt by their
efforts many difficult and unpromising cases have been
rehabilitated; but after full consideration we have come to
the opinion that the task of rehabilitation in the case of
men returning to freedom after a sentence of penal servitude
is too difficult and too costly to be left entirely to
voluntary societies, unaided by any grant of public funds,
and working independently of each other at a problem where
unity of method and direction is above all things required.
Mr. Secretary Churchill, to whom these views have been
represented, at once agreed that the difficulty lay in this
question of discharge, and that the official authority,
acting in close and friendly co-operation with the voluntary
societies must take a more active part than hitherto in
controlling the passage into free life of a man emerging
from penal servitude. ... A plan is now under consideration
for establishing a Central Agency of Control for Discharged
Convicts, on which both the official and unofficial element
will be represented, with a subsidy from public funds, the
purpose of which will be to take in hand the guidance and
direction of every convict on the day of discharge' (pp.
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