Draft letter from [WSC] (Home Office) to the Prime Minister [Herbert Asquith ] about Home Office business for the following year and two Home Office Bills. The first proposes amendments to the Coal Mines Regulations Act to improve safety through technical regulations. The second Bill (or group of Bills) covers the punishment of offenders. [WSC] expresses satisfaction with reaction to his administrative prison reforms, and suggests that a "scientific and benevolent measure" would be well-suited to Coronation year. [WSC] aims to reduce the large numbers of petty offenders through the following measures: reducing the numbers of juvenile adults imprisoned for "merely mischievous" offences; abolishing imprisonment for debt (with certain exceptions); and establishing a period of grace for the payment of fines. [WSC] also advocates that there should be different treatment given to habitual and occasional petty offenders with suspensory sentences for those who have committed offences "not involving violence, cruelty or the wilful destruction of property" and who have been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of less than a month. Having effected these reforms, [WSC] would implement a complete administrative re-organisation which would involve "one complete series of carefully graded specialised institutions" and a central Board of Classification to consider the cases of all offenders after sentencing. Typescript with manuscript corrections in the hand of WSC. See CHAR 12/2/99-112.