The Press FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 1946. “In Prison”

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24907, 21 June 1946, Page 6

The Press FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 1946. “In Prison”

The Controller-General of Prisons, Mr B. L. Dallard, whose address to the Wellington Rotary Club was reported this week, possibly does some good by denouncing a presentday tendency to “make light of “ wrong-doing ”. If there is a “ milk- ‘ and-watery attitude ” to moral questions, he does well to assail it. It may be mushy, false, and mischievous, as he says, to propose that “ all offenders against the “ law ” should be treated as “ sick “ persons ” rather than punished, though the thoughtful* citizen to whom Mr Dallard appeals will wish to know what kind .of “ treatment,”

in wha’. conditions, and by whom administered, this proposal calls for, and what the alternative “ punish- “ meat ” means, before he decides that Mr Dallard is entirely right. If Mr Dallard had named and quoted his pernicious theorists instead of denouncing them generally, the issue would have been clearer. More than that, he would have better" succeeded in preserving, if he wished to preserve, the fair distinction between loose eccentrics and sane reformers. Rational as his own views may be, however, the'distinction is lost in his way of presenting them; and his specific references to Mr Ormond Burton’s cook, “In “Prison," mak; it difficult to credit him with the wish tc preserve it—or the >vish to deal fairly with Mr Burton and his book in any respect whatever. “No doubt" Mr Burton would regard as “ boyish horse- • play ” the brutal battering of a warder by four convicts: not a word in the book suggests it. A savage attack on an old lady of 84 is “ap- “ patently a mere peccadillo in Mr “Burton’s eyes”: nothing Mr Burton wrote approaches such a judgment. Mr Burton, tolerant of the criminal, “ unctuously disparages “ the ‘ screws ’, as in the vernacular

’• he terms the warders in fact, Mr Burton calls the warders warders throughout his book, uses the word “ screw ” once only, repeatedly shows that he found warders friendly and considerate, and proposes nothing more outrageous than that men should be carefully selected and properly trained for the prison service.' When Mr Dallard misrepresents the book in three obvious particulars it is natural to ask whether he misrepresents it further, what it really says, and why it angers him. He misrepresents it totally, in fact, in part by distorting the effect of a few pages, in part by ignoring aL the rest. Tn those few pages, at the end of the book, Mr Burton discloses his sympathy with the objects of the Howard League, which are set out in full, declares that there is now little or nothing reformative in what is called “ reformative deten- “ tion ”, and condemns the indeterminate sentence. This seems to be the “ morbid and mischievous “ philosophy ” against which Mr Dallard grows hot—too hot to be fair; and there is no. need to say more. But most of Mr Burton’s book is taken up with an account, matter-of-fact, temperate, and goodhumoured, of his own experience and observations as a prisoner in several New Zealand gaols, leading him to offer certain elementary, practical suggestions. For example, Mr Burton suggested that prison medical examinations should be more thorough; that prison hygiene should be under closer and more ex-

tensive medical inspection; that prisoners, who work in summer dust and winter mud, should be allowed to bathe and change oftener; that prison libraries, established by regulation, should be furnished with readable books; that prisoners should not merely be permitted but encouraged and assisted to “ im- “ prove themselves ” by study; that recreational policy shculd be liberalised; that “uneconomic and old- ” fashioned methods ’" in prison labour should be discarded, so that prisoners may have a chance to recover their pride in efficient work; and, in sum, that the prison routine should be designed to help prisoners .to preserve or to restore their selfrespect as citizens. Of all this Mr Dallard said nothing, except as he condemned the “ morbid and mis- “ chievous philosophy ” of the book as a whole. If it is morbid and mischievous to plead for a little more hot" prater, a few more books and games, and a few modern tools end processes, as means to help the prisoner to brace his mind and lift his head, then the wty to sanity in

the penal system runs back to the treadmill. But the last word, not the least important, concerns Mr Dallard’s official position. As a public official he delivered a public address, remarkable for its rancorous tone and its grossly unfair controversial method. The fact should not escape the attention of the Minister to whom he is responsible and U'ho is responsible for him.