The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1888. ESCAPES FROM GAOL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1961, 4 October 1888, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1888. ESCAPES FROM GAOL.

" Jonathan Roberts can no longor claim to be the New Zealand Jack t-hepard. Rndka has shown that any prisoner who ha.s a. friend outside can walk oat of a JNew Zealand gaol without difficulty. There 13 no special merit m doing so, at all. That this is so ib a crying shame to our Government, especially m view of the largo sums of money expended by the Gaol Department. 1 have no wish to head a violent personal attack upon Captain Hume, but the fact remains that (m Bpite ot high salaries) the gaols under his management fail to retain their prisoners — not here or there, but everywhere. If heavy expenditure upon masonry, locks, bolts and bars is to be rendered useless by inefficient or meddlesome general supervision, the sooner barns are used instead of prisons, and cheap laborers instead of gaol officials, the better. The present insecurity of our gaols is a direct incentive to crime and a bitter mockery of the ofttalked of sword of justice." Thus, the paragraphist of the " Dunedin Evening Herald," who discourses of things m general under the heading, " Flowers and flutters of the week." And "so say all of us," for as " lovo laughs at locksmiths," so also assuredly will New Zealand gaolbirds laugh at their cages if this sort of thing be permitted to go on. It used to be supposed the gaols were places intended for the safe-keeping of prisoners, but we are fast returning to the arcadian state of things which existed m the very early days of the colony, when prisoners were allowed to go out when they pleased and were threatened with being locked out if they did not return at timely hours, fcseri ously, this frequency of escapes, as well from gaols as lunatic asylums, is becoming to be alarming and is nothing short of a ecandal, and it is high time that a rigid enquiry were instituted with a view to ascertaining who is or who are to blame. It begins to look as if there were a laxity of discipline all round.