The Evening Star SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1929. PRISON REFORM.

Evening Star, Issue 20132, 23 March 1929, Page 12

The Evening Star SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1929. PRISON REFORM.

A fortnight ago, moved by an article descriptive ot his experiences which wo received from an ox-prisoner, we wrote on prison reform. A letter, penned independently about tlie same time by another cx-prisoncr which has since come into om possession, prompts xis to return to the subject. It is surprising with what closeness the descriptions of the two writers, whom for distinction wo may call A and B, confirm each other. JB’s authority to speak is that he lately completed a sentence of two years’ hard labour in three Wellington prisons—tho Terrace, Mount Crawford, and Wi Tako, Trontham. He repeats the complaint of A as to tho early stage at which contamination is assisted by our penal system when he says that, while ho was awaiting his trial in tho remand yard, ho and other unfortunates, including twenty first offenders, were herded together with men, some of whom had been guilty of sexual offences of the most disgusting nature. He himself was, by force of necessity, the constant companion of such men until ho was allowed out on bail. As to what happens after conviction, he writes: “You are taken out with a gang of men, probably road making. Included in this gang are men—probably young clerks unfit for hard work for a week or two—who are doing what tho great men of New Zealand or tho world generally call reformative detention—oh, what a joke! Alongside with those unfortunate young nien trudges a man—or probably a dozen—doing ten years’ or five years’ hard labour for a most heinous sexual offence Probably on his left is another man with fifty convictions doing seven years and declared an habitual offender. Alongside of him comes probably a young chap of tender years doing reformative detention for stealing CIO of his master’s property.'’ They are all thrown together in “ Ills Majesty’s crime-manufacturing homestead, where what you don’t know about crime you will soon learn.” All that is true, apparently, beyond contradiction. Our prison system has its special institutions for special types of offenders Apart from the Borstal establishments, which arc less than gaols, there is a gaol at New Plymouth for the worst sexual offenders. But this beginning of an attempt at classification seems to be vitiated largely by two factors. Owing probably to general shortage of accommodation tho special institutions are not strictly confined to their cwn classes of inmates, and the worst kind of sexual pervert who has onco served his term at New Plymouth may he sent on minor charges, perhaps a score of times in succession, to any gaol where he can mix freely with others. It seems incredible that young offenders who, guilty perhaps of some minor transgression, would yet shudder, till they get used to them, at the sexual depravities of others, should be herded before their trial in such police gaols as that of Dunedin with the perpetrators of such crimes. The excuse lor it is that all men who are merely awaiting their trial arc presumed at that stage to bo innocent of the offences charged against them. Since they are all innocent in the law’s eyes, they have no need to bo protected from one another. Their enforced companionship scorns to be an example of nothing else so much as how a right principle can bo misapplied. Ex-Prisoner A lamented that “no real attempt seems to bo made in our gaols to get behind the prisoner’s mind, and to develop the spot of goodness, however small, without which no treatment is likely to succeed in his reformation.” But some warders apparently have their own view of what is required of them. B confirms A in his description of the system ot “ trusties ’’—gaol prefects or monitors, so to speak—who mo “ most often men doing a long term for a heinous offence.” As to tho warders’ idea of their responsibilities, we are told again that a customary greeting to a now inhabitant is “We tamo lions here.” Too often that is sought to ho done by “ bashings ” with fists and boots, if both of our authorities can bo believed, as well as by tho solitary confinement, on half-rations, of the “ dummy.” The picture shows which aro provided at intervals for prisoners can leave at times tho wrong impression. Our second authority writes: “I saw the picture of ‘ Ben Hur ’ whilst 1. was in Wi Tako, and some of the officers of to-day arc not one bit dificrenfc from what they were in those times.” Whether some of them are as bad as that or not, wo should like the new assurance which has been asked for by tho conference of the Howard League in Wellington in a resolution which stated as follows: — “ That tills branch is convinced of the necessity of raising the status of warders and wardresses by means of requiring higher initial qualifications than aro demanded at present, and by tho provision of a subsequent course of training of a wider educational nature than obtains at tho present time.”

It is fair to state that the principles of our prison system, so far as they can be judged by departmental reports, are enlightened beyond all cavil. The evidence is overwhelming, however—and it does not depend alone on tho word of ex-prisoners—that it falls short very grievously in practice. With nine years’ experience as a prison visitor Miss B. E. Baughan, whose intellect is not second to her sensibilities, describes our places of detention and of punishment as dens in which our social offenders, of all degrees of guilt, aro “ lumped together in a mass of moral filth.” That is bad economy as well as bad morality. No Government should be satisfied till it is corrected. It may be, as she suggests, that we send still too many people to gaol, instead of trusting them to supervised probation. It does seem an anomaly, as she points out, that ‘ in this little and by no means criminal country wo havp every day in our prisons nearly 1,500 souls, while England, with a

population some thirty times our own, has every clay in her prisons only eight times our'quota.” If the number was smaller there might be more room for classification without new expenditure upon buildings. At present it would seem that, with the best intentions for our prison system, wo are making a great deal of a mess of it.