New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, AUGUST 25.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4813, 25 August 1876, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, AUGUST 25.

The majority against Government on the question of a central penal establishment should be a warning to the Hon. Mr. Bowen. It should teach him that quiet and unobtrusive efforts to do some practical good in the department under his care are not sufficient to obliterate the worst forms of party spirit from the discussion on his proposals. It should also teach him that many of our legislators, who would argue a petty railway diversion in the interests of humanity, arc quite above the consideration of such petty matters as penal reform, although this is a subject to which the greatest English statesmen have not considered it beneath them to give attention. When the debate which terminated on Wednesday evening was adjourned, we found occasion to make a few remarks on the subject, and to point out the absolute necessity which existed for the formation of a central penal establishment, by which some means could be taken for the proper classification of prisoners, and which would enable the whole system of criminal imprisonment to be made something more than a plan by which offenders are detained for a longer or shorter space, according to the different degrees of their offences. There is no necessity to point out that the proper mode of dealing with criminals is to recognise that their punishments are all made in the interests of society, and that therefore everything possible should bo done to render the effects of those punishments likely to be as beneficial as possible to that society in the interests of which they are made. The question of the criminal's own position whilst undergoing punishment is not per se the matter at issue. The whole point is to so treat the criminal, to so regulate his punishment, as to mako it efficient for the prevention of crime. Long experience has shown that this end can only be attained by the adoption of systematic treatment, andthatas allprisons are more or less mere hotbeds of crime, so, if left without uniform control, without [ the exercise of those means which exI perienco has proved to be best for conducting such places, prisons are converted into the -very readiest and most efficacious modes of propagating crime. It is wo fear almost useless to point out to a number of our representatives that the condition of prison arrangements in Now Zealand is eminently unsatisfactory. The House of ltepresentatives contains a number of gentlemen who would think it quite unworthy of them to trouble themselves about so paltry a matter, as prison reform. Even Sir Georoe Gbey, who, to I judge by his speeches, should bo a social scientist of tho first flight, is content to I bo ignorant on tho matter, and to address

himself to it merely to point out the species of Capuan luxury in which Government clerks at £l5O a-year are accustomed to live. It would be mere waste of time then to argue the necessity for a central penal establishment with these gentlemen. All we can do is to ask them to bend thoir gigantic intellects for a space to the'perusal" of certain works on the subject, which may be found in any decent library, including that attached to the Houses of Assembly, and to assure them that if they will but do this they will find that the Hon. Mr. Bowen, in the unostentatious work he has already done as regards prison discipline in the colony, and in the further proposals he mates concerning it, is likely to do far more social and general good than all the devotion to the cause of humanity which some members profess to entertain is likely to accomplish. If this were admitted, the division on Wednesday night could be bettor attributed to its true cause, namely, an utter ignorance on the part of many of the importance of the question at issue, and a wretched spirit of local jealousy because Taranaki happened to bo selected as the site for the proposed central penal establishment. Indeed, we may go further and say (though, for the credit of the House, the confession is humiliating) that more than one member who voted in the majority let this spirit of jealousy override the decision which his convictions on the subject would have otherwise recorded. The bare question, then, is as a matter of fact narrowed down, to the matter of a central penal establishment at Taranaki, as it was on this that the division turned so far as regards the majority. And this being so, we have only to ask why Taranaki should not be chosen as the site for the central prison, or why it should be objected to, except on those grounds of local jealousy which we have already noticed ?