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Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5058, 29 November 1926, Page 3

A contrast between prison methods no,w and in the old days was made by Mr G. Cruikshank, S.M., at a meeting of the Prisoners’ and Patients’ Aid Society in Invercargill (reports the Southland Times). Youths. sent to the Borstal were not. convicted ; they were merely “ordered” to the institution, where they became not prisoners; but “inmates.” In the early days prisons became more or less pig-sties, and convicts in their cells had food thrust at them as though they were animals. In the Borstal Institution how the boys sat down together at clean tables with cutlery and so on before them and. were waited on by several ot their number. They were all very well behaved, and there was no chance of their becoming hogs through evil associations. “Teach a boy good manners and the first step in the task of reformation is. undertaken,” said the speaker. He added that a recent innovation in the life of the Borstal was a “pleasant hour” on Sunday. At one time the inmates were locked up early on Sundays and left to their own devices. Now they assembled and listened to addresses, not necessarily on religious subjects, or to music from the institution’s gramophone.