DEVILS ISLAND

Hokitika Guardian, 10 January 1929, Page 2

DEVILS ISLAND

SALVATION ARMY PLANS

PARIS, November 10

Tin* Salvation Army is going to tidy up Devil’s Island. No spot on the whole American Continent knows as much misery as the penitentiary colony in Guiana, with its fever-stricken swamps. No island anywhere in the world is blackened with as much shame as Devil’s Island. No men were ever more unhappy than the “ bagnards ” who are sent to the colonial penitentiary to live the rest of their lives in bondage.

The recent escape from the island of Dr Bougrat, Marseilles physician, who was taken there less than a year ago after his conviction for the murder of a bank cashier who visited him in his office, again drew the attention of the world to Guiana.

The Salvation Army of France sent one of its young volunteers. Ensign Bean, to the colony to study the field and determine just what the Army could do to try to redeem for human' ity and civilisation the moral wrecks cast there. Pean found 3000 former convicts living in Guiana because they were ashamed to come home. Marked with the stigma of Devil’s Island, they knew that they could never re-establish themselves in the life they knew before their sentence to penitentiary. There are thousands of “doublards,” too, who check off one day on the calendar every time the sun sets, dreaming of the distant day when they will have doubled the length of their sentence. It is French law that prisoners sentenced to the island penitentiary must serve double the length of the sentence, first as a prisoner, and then as a free man held in observation. A 20-year sentence is really 40 years in exile, and 40 years on Devil’s Island generally means life. Pean lived among the “ bagnards ’ and the “doublards,” working with them on the long road being built out 'from Cayenne across tlu; swamps of Guiana. This road lias been building for 40 years, and is not yet half finished. It would be hard to estimate the lives that have gone into every kilometre of roadway built. Under the pententiarv administration the prisoners are kept busy to help them break the monotony of confinement. They are not locked up in cells except at night, and during the days are put to road building, cane cutting, or backing down the virginal growth in the swamps. It is the plan of the Salvation Army to rehabilitate the prisoners by educating them, by teaching them trades and preparing them ior their return to France by inculcating a respect for civilisation and its rules. Many off the “doublards” are given added punishment by being forbidden access to Cayenne and the other communities. These men are not allowed to pass a deadline at the seven kilometre post outside the town. Beyond that line they are free, but they are not tempted to work for the law forbids them to be paid for their labour. Without money, the law-makers believed, these prisoners could not escape.

“ It is p'ossible to do something for these unfortunates without taking anything tfrom the severity of their punishment,” Ensign Pean declared in his report. “ They have lost all hope, they have no incentive to he good or to better their position. Their punishment really begins the day of their liberation, for they have learned nothing but hatred during their captivity, and they become a menace to civilisation when they are turned out by the penitentiary. *• Their only dream is to escape. One way or another they all try it. They need only to swim the Maroni, a wide river, to get into Dutch Guiana, If they know a job, have 1200 francs in their pockets and behave decently, they are allowed to live in peace, but otherwise they are turned over to the penitentiary officials again for punishment. That generally consists of solitary confinement on Salvation Island, even worse than Devil’s Island, in spite of its name. “There are terrible currents, and only a 'few who try ever get across in safety. While I was there 22 men seeking to escape in a small boat were all drowned in the swift current when the boat overturned. Those who get to Brazil or to Venezuela are almost certain to avoid capture. The Government has authorsied the Aunj to carry on. its plan.”