FILLING THE GAOLS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 171, 6 August 1937, Page 4

FILLING THE GAOLS

The dartger, when adminietemg a backward people, of letting legislation far outrun education ie well illuatrated by the case of Southern Rhodesia, comments the Manchester Guardian. A leading artide in- the Bulawayo Chronicle sums up the facts. They are taken from the report of the Department of Justice for last year. They reveal that over 54,000 natives were convicted and over 25,000 sent to prison. By far the greatest number of offences were against the pass laws which regulate a native's movements, but failure to pay the dog tax, to observe the ordinance governing the relations of master and servant or the rules laid down for the control of traffic also contributed largely to filling the gaols. In all 62,241 pases were brought in courts of first instance. All except a small proportion of these were misdemeanours that indicated no criminal intent, yet in far too high a proportion imprisonment resulted. It is not only the cost to the State of bringing the processes of the law into action over trifles that is deplorable. What is going to be the effect of a taste of prison life upon the many natives who suffer it through sheer ignorance? It was lately recommended that the Highways Code, a fruitful source of transgressions, should he printed in the native languages. That is elcmentary common sense, yet hundreds of prosecutions had been biought before it was proposed. A tightening of the pass laws is now imminent. Deplorable as it is in any case, it must be doubly so because of the increases which it will cause in the wholesale imprisonment of natives,