The Globe. MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1878.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1466, 28 October 1878, Page 2

The Globe. MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1878.

The report of the Gaols Committee on the main subject of their inquiry, namely, the general state of the gaols of the colony, has boon brought up. Their report with regard to the supplementary subject committed to them, namely, Mr. Barton's charges against the police, has already been briefly dismissed in these columns. That, however, was more of a local than general character, dealing particularly with the police of Wellington and drawing inferences from their defects as to the defects of the police in other parts of the colony. The present report professes to discuss the question of gaol management for the colony, and to generalise accordingly. The principal conclusions arrived at are that as things are now conducted there is great lack of inspection, want of classification, want of stimulus to industry among the prisoners, want of instruction, and great inequalities in the payment of gaol officers in different localities. Of these faults the second is undoubtedly the greatest, and is one upon which more has, perhaps, been said during the last twelve years than upon any other subject. The matter was discussed in the Assembly in 1867, and the result of the discussion was the appointment of the Commission referred to in this report. Upon no point did the Commissioners lay more stress than upon the absolute necessity of classi tying the prisoners of the colony. Between the exhaustive report of the Commissioners and the present report of the Committee an elaborate parallel might bo drawn which would bo very little flattering to the colony as regards its progress in the treatment of criminals. After the lapse of ton years wo find tho very same shortcomings revealed, the same, or nearly tho same recommendations made whereby improvements might bo introduced which were even then regarded as of tho most urgent importance. The injury which the neglect of these recommendations during the ten intervening years has done to the colony is simply incalculable. For ten years tho manufacture of criminals, as promoted by the system, has gone on in tho gaols uulot, or with very slight chocks upon it, and it is not too much to say that in every chief centre of population a quasi-criminal class, one thatis living without visible means of living, has been established. “ The tendency and ordinary effects of the present system are,” said tho Commissioners of 1868, “ to harden old offenders; to demoralise, corrupt, and debase those who have recently become criminals, and innocent persons waiting for trial; jnd to afford opportunities for inotructkft

and confederation in all kinds of crime and vice; so that almost every prison in the colony may well he considered as discharging the functions of a training school for the creation and maintenance of regular criminal classes.” And again—- “ The mode of construction of almost every one of the prisons is radically defective in respect of means of separation, classification, and surveillance.” “No adequate distinction,” say the Committee of 1878, “can at present be made between the treatment of penal servitude and hard labour prisoners. First offenders, sentenced for comparatively slight offences, are associated with hardened and older criminals. In some gaols young women, of good moral character previous to conviction, have been associated with women of utterly depraved characters and habits, and juvenile offenders of both sexes have no separate accommodation provided for them.” The above extracts show clearly the extent of advancement which the colony has made in this particular. While New Zealand has been doubling and trebling her population, while she has multiplied her wealth manifold, while in all other directions she has laid her ban upon the doctrine of laissez fairs as fit only for poltroons, Sybarites, or imbeciles, in this one respect she has clung to that same doctrine, and carried it into practice with the most remarkable persistency. The consequences, as we have said, are not such as can be brought forward in the form of a perfect demonstration. But can any reasonable person doubt that in those ton years a terrible evil has been wrought, a crime committed by the community, on the one hand against the individuals who have thus been educated in depravity, and on the other against all the generations who will succeed the present dwellers in the land—a crime for which even the most prompt and thorough reform cannot wholly atone? We are not going to throw blame upon one Ministry more than another for this state of things. It is true the Atkinson Government made some feeble attempt to induce the House to establish a central institution for long service prisoners at Taranaki. But the scheme had in it very much that was objectionable, and challenged the rejection which befel it. It is true, also, that the late Ministry introduced the mark system, which the Committee consider a beneficial one. This, however, was a comparatively small matter, and did not reach the main evil. The present Government have attempted nothing, as yet, at least. Why should they ? There is no demand whatever from the people for this reform. There will be no popularity to be got out of it, and colonial Governments can only afford to attend to such things as promise to ingratiate them with the people. But let the community show an earnest wish that this reform should be brought about, and the Government will take it in hand promptly enough. It is the whole community that is to blame, and not merely the politicians. There is, in fact, no one free from blame who permits himself to place a higher value upon a public work, or anything which tends to increase the wealth and importance of the colony, than he does upon those unobtrusive measures which have to do with the healthy organisation and protection of society, and whoso sanction is found in the law of humanity—to say nothing of religion or Christianity, such things being, of course, quite inapplicable to the politics of this enlightened era.