PRISON REFORM

Hokitika Guardian, 14 November 1930, Page 6

PRISON REFORM

. STATEMENT BY CONTROLLER -yy, GENERAL. /By Telegraph—Per Press Association WELLINGTON, November 14. , Prison development in New Zealand was traced by the Controller GenerZtt of Prisons, Mr B. L. Dallard, in an address last evening before the Wellington branch of the Howard League for Prison Reform, after which he referred to the present day treatment. He said the idea underlying the right to remove an offender from the midst of society had given place to the realisation that although the Society might lie protected whilst the offender .wp%-in prison, he was a greater 'menace than ever before if be emerged worse than when he-entered,., craftier than ever, : embittered by experience or i-f-be were hardened by treatment in prison, rather than socialised in his attitude. The classification of offenders was now recognised as an important fundamental,* and the general trend was for a decrease in the prison population.

Tlie number committed to prison last year was fifty per 1 cent, less per hundred thousand of general population than it had been twenty-five years ago. The drop since the immediate pre-war years had been from thirty-one per cent, per hundred thousand to seventeen point five per cent, per hundred thousand last year.

Greater attention was now being given to the question of after care, and the Department had associated with its probation officers voluntary committeemen to the of several hundred throughout the country, who assisted those who had made a slip to re-establish themselves as useful units of society. -