PRISON SPIES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 1 May 1930, Page 14

PRISON SPIES

"CRAWLERS" TO WARDERS

POSITION IN NEW ZEALAND -

One of the troubles in New Zealand prisons was that all kinds of spying and informing went on, stated Mr. F. A. de la Mare at the annual conference of the New Zealand Howard League for Penal Beforin yesterday. That was what he was told by men who had been in English prisons. In English and Australian prisons there was no spying. He strongly supported the remit, '' That the Prisons Board should act only after receiving reports by a properly constituted psychological clinic and local welfare board." The Prisons Board, he contended could, under the present system, only obtain information within the prison; and the public were not protected, by a _ report of good conduct from the warder, for a bad man outside might be very good in prison. A man in prison in New Zealand, if he, had a chance of securing a remission of his sentence, was not going to fall foul of the warder, with whom he had to "make his marble good." So he became what the prisoners called "a crawler" and gave information to the warder. Mr. de. la Mare said he was informed that iv Australian prisons an informer would be killed by his fellowprisoners. They would trap him by giving him false information, and then, when, it came back to them, would get up a melee in which he would be kicked to death. No man, therefore, dared to spy in Australian prisons. The warder's report could not tell the board anything that would justify releasing the prisoner, he contended; and remissions of sentence under the existing system created a sense of injustice, the prisoners feeling that a man with money;or friends had a better chance.of getting a remission than a man with no friends. But a mental defectives board and a psychological clinic would guarantee that.a man was fit for liberation. He did not object to the personnel of the Prisons Board, but it made no pretence of investigating cases. Mr. E. M. Laing said that it used to. Miss B. E. Baughan quoted a letter from an ex-prisoner, stating that in one case- the Prisons Board had considered the cases of 60 men in less than two hours. The remit was carried. On the motion of Miss Baughan, it was also resolved that "No Judge or Magistrate should .on any pretext take into consideration the criminal record of any prisoner on trial until such prisoner has pleaded or been found guilty." —

On a charge oE using obscene language- in Courtenay place yesterday, Alfred Eruest Swan, aged 23, was fined £2, in default seven clays' imprisonment by Mr. E. Page, S.M., in the' Magistrate's Court to-day. Swan was convicted and discharged for being drank.