Word Finder - penal

definition

Of or relating to punishment.

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penal servitude

definition

Subject to punishment; punishable.

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a penal offence

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Serving as a place of punishment.

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a penal colony

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Exorbitant.

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a penal rate of interest.

Siberia was for many years a penal colony.

The penal code was unified and reformed in 1890.

In spite of the gravity of the charges formulated against many prominent men, the report merely deplored and disapproved of their conduct, without proposing penal proceedings.

The penal discipline of to-day, much modified and varied it is true, may be largely traced to it.

The recidivist class is for those previously sentenced to penal servitude or whose record shows them to have been guilty of grave and persistent crime.

In Belgium, where penal administration has received the closest attention for a number of years, the regime of cellular imprisonment has been long carried to its farthest limits, and solitary confinement ranging over ten years and in some cases much more has been strictly enforced.

In England, moreover, which, if not the first to adopt separation in principle, certainly gave the largest effect to it in practice, continuous cellular confinement for short terms is ceasing to be the inevitable rule; and although it has been retained in cases of penal servitude for the first six months, it was in 1899 practically abandoned for lesser sentences, and all prisoners after the first month work together in association under surveillance.

Accordingly, in 1853 the first Penal Servitude Act was passed, substituting certain shorter sentences of penal servitude for transportation.

Penal servitude, to use the words of the lord chief justice Sir Alexander Cockburn, one of the members of the committee, "was hardly calculated to produce on the mind of the criminal that salutary dread of the recurrence of the punishment which may be the means of deterring him and, through his example, others from the commission of crime."

The committee last quoted gave it as their opinion that "penal servitude as at present administered is on the whole satisfactory; it is effective as a punishment and free from serious abuses.

If this be "imprisonment," so called to distinguish it from "penal servitude," although both mean deprivation of liberty and are closely akin, it is undergone in one of the "local" prisons - the prisons till 1878 under local jurisdiction, but now entirely controlled by the state through the home secretary and the commissioners of prisons.

The regime undergone is cellular; able-bodied prisoners are kept in strict separation for at least a month, and during that time subjected to severe labour; although the term of first-class hard labour and of purely penal character no longer exists.

Where the sentence passes beyond two years it ceases to be styled imprisonment and becomes penal servitude, which may be inflicted for any period from three years to life.

Further modifications have been introduced from time to time in the British penal system, tending mostly to milder discipline, more intelligent classification of prisoners and a certain amelioration of their lot.

The views of this committee were embodied in a Penal Servitude bill which was long debated, but became law in 1898.

The Prison Act of 1898 made some marked changes in penal discipline.

The general progress made in prison treatment will be best realized by a brief survey of penal institutions in the principal countries of the world.

This country has spared neither pains nor money in carrying out penal processes, and the Belgian prisons are examples of the cellular system prolonged to the utmost limits of human endurance.

The really penal establishments are 77 in number, the great ergastolo of San Stefano being one.

Most trades and handicrafts are practised, such as shoemaking, tailoring, carpentry, the work of whiteand Report of the Royal Commission on Penal Servitude (1878-1879).

Du Cane, Punishment and Prevention of Crime (1885); Braco, Estudos penitenciarios e criminaes (Lisbon, 1888); Garofalo, Studio sul delitto, sulle sui cause e sui mezzi di repressione (1890); Adolphe Guillot, Les Prisons de Paris (1890); Tallack, Preventive and Penological Principles (1896); Salillas, Vida penal en Espana (Madrid).

The Reformation and later revolutions have destroyed most of the houses of Augustinian Hermits, so that now only about a hundred exist in various parts of Europe and America; in Ireland they are relatively numerous, having survived the penal times.

Under an act approved on the 25th of March 1903 a state board of charities and corrections, - consisting of six members, not more than three being of the same political party, appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of the senate, and holding office for twelve years, two retiring at the end of each quadrennium, - investigates, examines, and makes " reports upon the charitable, correctional and penal institutions of the state," excepting the Veterans' Home at Yountville, Napa county, and the Woman's Relief Corps Home at Evergreen, Santa Clara county.

The laws are the Indian Penal and Civil Procedure Codes and Evidence Acts, supplemented by a few local laws promulgated by proclamation.

The government retorted by adding several new penal laws to the statute-book, though less than thirty Catholics were brought to the scaffold during James's reign.

Although not actually repealed, the penal laws were seldom put in force, and mass was openly celebrated in London and elsewhere.

The history of the old penal laws against Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom has been sketched above and in the article Ireland, History.'

In 1916 he was once more arrested on a charge of high treason brought against him by the military authorities and was sentenced to four years' penal servitude.

Oran became the penal settlement of Spain, but neither the convicts nor the noblemen in disgrace who were also banished thither seem to have been under rigorous surveillance; contemporary accounts speak of constant fetes, games and bull-fights.

They were more penal than reformatory institutions, and the inmates were taught certain occupations by which they might support themselves on leaving.

O'Reilly was arrested at Dublin, where his regiment was then quartered, tried by court-martial for concealing his knowledge of an impending mutiny, and sentenced to be shot, but the sentence was subsequently commuted to twenty years' penal servitude.

About this time, indeed, there was in Scotland a remarkable approximation to that solution of the toleration difficulty which later ages have approved; for the regent was understood to favour the demand of the "congregation" that at least the penal statutes against heretics "be suspended and abrogated," and "that it be lawful to us to use ourselves in matters of religion and conscience as we must answer to God."

They insisted on the restoration of the ancient Catholic customs, and would have made neglect of fasting and other sins of omission penal offences.

There are no vindictive punishments, such as a solitary confinement, penal servitude for long terms of years, &c. Seldom, indeed, is a man imprisoned more than twelve months, the rule being that there is a general jail delivery at the New Year.

The punishment for a felonious rescue may be penal servitude for not more than seven or less than three years, or imprisonment for not more than two years, with or without hard labour.

A council of 120 unpaid delegates, selected from the local councils, served partly as a committee for preparing the assembly's programme, partly as an administrative board which received embassies, arbitrated between contending cities and exercised penal jurisdiction over offenders against the constitution.

Among other things, Phillips contended, during his later years, for prohibition, woman suffrage and various penal and administrative reforms. He was not always the best judge of character, and was sometimes allied in these movements with men who were little more than demagogues.

Cayenne is the seat of the government of French Guiana, and was formerly a penal settlement for political offenders.

On the 22nd of February 1604 a proclamation was issued banishing priests; on the 28th of November 1604, recusancy fines were demanded from 13 wealthy persons, and on the 10th of February 1605 the penal laws were ordered to be executed.

Before putting this plan into execution, however, it was decided to try a "quiet way"; and Winter was sent over to Flanders to obtain the good offices of Juan de Velasco, duke of Frias and constable of Castile, who had arrived there to conduct the negotiations for a peace between England and Spain, in order to obtain the repeal of the penal laws.

The favourable reports made by Captain Cook of the country around Botany Bay induced the British government to found a penal settlement on the south-eastern part of what was then known as New Holland.

Penal establishments were formed at Newcastle in New South Wales, at Hobart and Launceston in Tasmania, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to colonize Port Phillip. The most noteworthy incident in the first decade of the 19th century was the forcible deportation by the officers of the New South Wales Corps, a regiment raised in England for service in the colony, of the governor, Captain Bligh, R.N., the naval officer identified with the mutiny of the " Bounty."

During the regime of this able administrator New South Wales was transformed from a penal settlement to a colony.

The state penal and reformatory institutions consist of the state prison at Thomaston, the state (reform) school for boys at South Portland, and a state industrial school for girls at Hallowell, established in 1875 and taken over by the state in 1899.

His devotional treatises were very popular among English Roman Catholics in the penal days.

Charitable and Penal Institutions.-The charitable and penal institutions of the state include the penitentiary at Jefferson City, opened in 1836, which is self-supporting; a training school for boys at Boonville (opened 1889), an industrial home for girls at Chillicothe (established 1887), hospitals for the insane at Fulton (1847), St Joseph (opened 1874), Nevada (1887), and Farmington (1899); a school for the blind at St Louis (opened 1851); a school for the deaf at Fulton (opened 1851); a colony for the feeble-minded and epileptic at Marshall (established 1899); a state sanitorium, for consumptives, at Mount Vernon (established 1905, opened 1907); a Federal soldiers' home at St James, and a Confederate soldiers' home at Higginsville (both established 1897).

The first step which he took towards that end was to annul, by an unconstitutional exercise of his prerogative, all the penal statutes against the Roman Catholics; and in order to disguise his real design, he annulled at the same time the penal statutes against Protestant nonconformists.

The Transkeian territories, which fall under the jurisdiction of the eastern district court, are subject to a Native Territories Penal Code, which came into force in 1887.

Ferreira and four companions were tried for murder and convicted, February 1907, the death sentences being commuted to terms of penal servitude.

It was at once reprinted in England, France and Germany, attracting wide praise by its remarkable simplicity and vigour, and especially by reason of its philanthropic provisions in the code of reform and prison discipline, which noticeably influenced the penal legislation of various countries.