PRISON SYSTEM

Hokitika Guardian, 15 March 1932, Page 2

PRISON SYSTEM

OLD AND NEW METHODS. EARLY DAYS IN NEW ZEALAND WANGANUI, March 12. “Although the real success of a prison administration cannot be gauged by the ledger balances, but by the amount of salvage of human ■wreckage, fhc finances are an iinportan matter,” said Mr B .L. Dallard, Controller-General of Prisons and Assistaine Public Service Commissioner, in an address to the conference of New Zealand Justices of the Peace, last night. “In recent years attention has been focussed on the criminal from a more constructive angle than hitherto. Originally the retributive and deterrent elements predominated. The protective and deterrent purposes must always continue to be important considerations, but the idea underlying society’s right to remove an offender from its midst has given place to a realisation that although society may be protected while an offender is in prison if he emerges from there worse than be entered, rather than socialised in his outlook, he is a greater menace to society than before. Consequently the efforts to socialise and reform are regarded as factors of paramount importance in the present-day treatment of offenders.” Mr Dnllard dealt briefly with the foundation on the prison system and (t* progress up t« the presept tune, He considered that the policy of cautious prQgressiveppss adopted by England would apply with equal effectiveness in Npw Zealand. In 1886 the Ngw Zealand prison s ys= tern had not been organised and few records were available. The earliest record of prison, that he had been able to trace was one in 1738 at Ivororareka (iiow Russell), where there was then a white population of about a thousand. The first gaol is stated to have been ap old sea chest, and before that tarring and feathering had been respited to. As the colony progressed lpore prisons and gaols were established, but. serious offenders were transported to. Tasmania, some were detained in military barracks, and some sent to the prison hulks, the last of which was destroyed at Otago Heads 40 years ago. He considered that the lack of organisation before 1880 was due to the fact that the Governor of New South Wales was uncertain of the power of his jurisdiction in New Zealand. The real control of the prisons had come after several investigations bnd been made into the prison system and the state of the prisons in the colony. Although a local gaol had been established at Wellington earlier, the first documentary evidence available was dated 1849 and was a gaoler’s journal which showed in a cryptic form some of the worst features of the early prison methods in New Zealand. The journal describes various incidents at the prison, such as the locking up of “Jackson,” a lunatic who had struck another lunatic on the head with a brick. Several other entries refer to the transportation of prisoners to Van Diemqn’s Land,