The Dominion TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1919. PLACING THE PRISONS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 213, 3 June 1919, Page 4

The Dominion TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1919. PLACING THE PRISONS

The action of the Prisons Department in taking over portion of the Defence reserve at Trentham as a prison site is open to very serious objections. At first it was supposed that this move implied the evacuation of the area now occupied by the Terrace Gaol—a splendid site for almost anything but a prison—in the heart of a congested area, which ought.to have been made available long ago for a public school. It now appears, however, that the creation of a penal establishment at Trentham is merely incidental to the abandonment of the prison brickyard at Mount_ Cook, which is required as a site for the new Technical School, and that the date on which tho Terrace site will be vacated by the Prisons. Department is still uncertain. In the main, therefore, if they arc persisted in without amendment the arrangements now proposed by the Department will intensify an exceedingly unsatisfactory state of affairs already existing—a state of affairs which -the people of the city and its suburban areas ought to refuse absolutely to 'tolerate. Already Wellington is saddled with two convict establishments—the Terrace Gaol and the Point Halswell Prison—and now it is proposed to add a third in the outer suburban area, where it will necessarily cloud the prospects and impair the popularity of a district which promises otherwise to rapidly absorb an increasing population. The Hutt Valloy is likely to prove one of the principal residential outlets for the city population, and it is an astonishing thing to find the Minister and the Prisons Department at a time like this adopting a course so calculated to militate against a move in this direction. It has been stated by tho Department that only short-sentence good-conduct prisoners will be sent to Trentham, and some rather vague assurances havo been offered also that the new establishment will be of a temporary character, and will be occupied as a prison only until certain swamp drainage and ' other improvements have been carried out on the Defence .reserve. Assurances_ to this effect must be regarded with suspicion, however, unless they are given in the most explicit terms. The continued occupation of tho Terrace site, though it has long been evident that it is utterly unsuited for a prison and eminently Suitable for other purposes, sufficiently illustrates the fact that it is much easier to permit the imposition of such an incubus as is proposed at Trentham than to secure its removal. The idea of employing prisoners of a given type on land-nnprovcmeiit works has a good deal to commend it. But it is at least debateable whether a prison camp ousjht to be established even temporarily, and with 'such objects in view, as near to a centre of_ population as Trentham. Certainly there are many areas rather more remote in which good-conduct prisoners might be employed quite as profitably and in conditions as conducive to their own benefit and improvement. At the same time there is no stable guarantee as yet that the Trentham site, once occupied for prison purposes, will not bo retained by the Prisons ment for a long term of years. It would be unfair not to take account of the practical difficulties against which the Department has to contend, but the people of Wellington and its suburban areas are fully entitled to demand' not only that there shall be no additionp,to the penal establishments in their midst, but that those which already exist shall be as speedily as possible to a minimum. As was observed tho other'day on behalf of the Prisons Department, the modern system is to employ prisoners as far aB possible on the land instead of keeping them in towns. A halfway policy in this matter is as little to be commended as one of keeping prisoners in towns. A com-' plete reorganisation of prisons on modern lines will take time, but the Department ought to be vigorously developing a policy under which all penal establishments other than a depot prison and a police gaol would be removed well afield from Wellington or any other contre of population. Such a policy, as has been noted, is as much to be desired from the standpoint of efficient prison administration and with an eye to the reformation of prisoners as in the interests of people in populated areas who object to the existence of a convict prison in their near neighbourhood. This is so well recognised that tho Department may well bti asked to extend and expedite its activities in the direction of removing prisons from the centres of population. On the evidence supplied in its successive reports, the policy of the Department seems to be hesitant and not free from an element of confusion, Ai tho end of August last there was a prison population of about, 073, including 212 offenders against the Military Service Act. To accommodate this comparatively small number there are eleven more or less important prisons scattered 'over the Dominion and several others listed as "minor." In a number of instances the arrangements made for the accommodation of prisoners are avowedly temporary. For instance, in his last report the permanent head of tho Prisons Department observes that the Lyttelton Prison is now in tho last stages of disso-

lution, and is only being retained until accommodation can be found elsewhere for the few remaining prisoners. Dunedin' Prison, it is added, "is now little more than a polico gaol, all prisoners sentenced at Dunedin to more than three months being transferred elsewhere." Even in regard to Auckland Prison, which ranks as the strongest and safest institution of its kind in the Dominion, it is observed that the habitual criminals now housed thcro must be removed "when finance permits" to a separate institution situated in some suitable locality away from centres of population. As regards tho local priso", the report states that

tho Wellington Prison is now used chiefly as a drafting prison, where prisoners aro received and kept until they can be sent elsewhere. Short-sentenca prisoners are, of courso, retained during the whole period of their sentences, as tho cost of transferring them elsewhere would not be justified 'by results. A certain number of long-sentence prisoners still require to bo kept at the Wellington Prison, however, to carry on our clothing factory and our brickworks at Mount Cook.

The reasons assigned for the retention of long-sentence prisoners at Wellington seem quite inadequate, and there does not seem to ifc any reason why the Department should not adopt tho same policy in this district as at Dunedin and Lyttelton. Local interests apart, on the facts in sight a reduction iiv the number of prisons ought to make both for economy -ancl efficiency. With less than five thousand persons entering and leaving the prisons in the course of a year, and, on an average, about a thousand prisoners in detention at a given time, a considerable measure of concentration should be quite consistent with the methodical classification of prisoners which modern practice' ds. No doubt the chief thing necessary to permit and facilitate the removal of prisons from unsuit/ible locations in populated areas is the vigorous development of a limited number of institutions like the Waikcria Reformatory. Here, apart from tho development of tho institution itself, valuable road works are being carried out by _ the prisoners. Of the total activities in hand, the report of the Prisons Department observes that

any unbiasod onlooker at tho spectaclo here presented—men busily engaged in the work of transforming a wilderness of manuka and swamp into what will eventually become 0110 of tho finest properties in the Dominion—could not but como to the conclusion that here, indeed, is an object-lesson in the useful employment of prison labour.

After this account of progressive activity it is distinctly disappointing to find that after years of development accommodation lias been provided at AVaikeria for only 102 prisoners. By expanding and expediting such Activities as are under way at Waikeria, the Department presumably has a ready means of remedying the objectionable features of its existing and proposed arrangements in the local district.