Treatment of Prisoners.

Patea Mail, Volume VI, Issue 542, 6 July 1880, Page 2

Treatment of Prisoners.

The now Police Station for Patca is now finished and occupied. The building was put up by Messrs Mace and Bassett, and is finished in a style very creditable to them as contractors. The plot of land is about three-quarters of an aero, but the vacant area is not sufficient to graze a horse, nor have the wise designers considered it necessary to allow a bit of ground for the resident sergeant to grow his vegetables. There arc two resident constables in Patea, and when the Government were designing a police station they might surely have remembered that one cottage is not enough for two officers who, in the ordinary course of things, should be heads of families. They have provided shelter for only one. Sergeant M’Grath is to re* side iu the cottage, and take charge of the cells. Here again the design is curiously faulty, for only two cells arc provided for casual “jlodgers” from a very large district, prisoners being often brought from Waverley and Waitotara and other remote places to be tried at Patea, requiring temporary lodgment. How can two cells be considered adequate to meet such emergencies as arc common in the discharge of police duties ? The calls appear to be moderately strong, but it is wretched economy that denies to prisoners even a wooden bench to sit on. There are only the floor and four walls for the prisoner, and he finds himself cooped up in a whitewashed box as big as a cupboard. There ought to have been in each cell a fixed wooden frame to servo as bench and bed. Our colonial police system is so humane that a prisoner is to be treated like an animal penned up fo r slaughter. Ho is presumed to be guilty until it pleases the powers to let him out of his box to demonstrate his innocence. The spirit of British law is here reversed, for the true principle is to presume a prisoner’s innocenco until he be proved guilty. Who tire the superior well-paid servants that mismanage the colony’s business in this fashion? Can such Civil Servants be worth their salt?