"THE ISLAND."

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 7 August 1919, Page 3

"THE ISLAND."

An unhappy woman of middleage, charged at the Police Court with vagrancy, pleaded that she had " only just left the Island," when re-arrested. She was found wandering by night, wet to the skin, half frozen, and halfstarved. The police handed in a long list of convictions for drunkenness. This case provokes the question: "Is the Island the right place for chronic inebriates? "We are constantly reading in the local dailies of unfortunates who have escaped from this place, or been discharged from it, and who have again fallen into the hands of the police almost immediately after a lengthened sojourn at the place. Chronic drunkenness is now admitted to be a disease, and should be treated as a disease. That is the drink craving must be eradicated., otherwise the unfortunate sufferer will go. on getting drunk until the system gives way and the patient succumbs. What are the methods adopted at Pakatoa? The police doubtless know. I don't think the outside public have the faintest idea.