PRISON VARIETY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 285, 27 July 1932, Page 8

PRISON VARIETY

AMERICA PROVIDES CONTRASTS IN PRISON LIFE. • LUXURY AND MISERY. The necessity for securing some international standard for prison conditions and methods was emphasised by two speakers at a recent luncheon of the Howard League for Penal Reform in London. Mi'ss Margaret Fry, who recently returned from a visit to the United States, gave an account of what she had seen in a few prisons there. The great State penitentiary at St. Quentin, California, was the first prison Miss Fry visited. Here she noted the freedom with which trusted prisoners were allowed to go in | and out of the building, the neatness of their suits, and their varied choice of hats. The prison was superbly situated on a hill overlooking the sea and surrounded by a wealth of flowers. Some of the prisoners were playing tennis, but without raekets. Money and Gay Raiment. The old hospital, which had been turned into a woman's prison, was surrounded by a beautiful ^arden, enclosed with high wire-netting. Each of the 120 women had a room of her own; there was a large common room and a plentiful supply of bathrooms. Each woman was allowed to spend ;about two dollars a week, much of which was spent on gay cretonnes for their rooms, gay jumpers, or smart shoes. This might seem an ideal state of things, Miss Fry said, but she was distressed to find how little work was provided for the prisoners. The prison felt likfe a place in which everything that money could do had been done, but which psychologically wlas completely wrong. No one could hope to go out any better for , the time spent there. Little work was being done in the men's prisons, though there were some 'educational classes. "We h'ave Iots of Ph.D's here," Miss Fry was told. In both prisons there were perfectly dark punishment cells to which prisoners were committed at the discretion of tbs governor or the matron. Prisoners in these cells were given bread and water, and on every fourth day one meal. Some Difference "A ghastly place," was Miss Fry's description of the local prison she visited at Alameda, a very unsuitable building attached to the courthouse. This prison containing 200 men and about fifteen women had no governor. The sheriff seemed to take entire resposibility. Here prisoners were confined in what were simply dark and airless cages intended for two men, but containing four or six at a time. Each cage was fitted with bunks and a lavatory. "Throughtout the day the prisoners walked in and out of each other's cells as they liked. These men, who were mostly in for one or two years, had no work to do, and got no exercise. They sat and played cards all day long. They were of all ages, including the convicted and the untried and large numbers of Chinese awaiting deportation. Cage Dwellers. In the State prison of Nevada, which was hollowed out of glaring white rock, Miss Fry found again no work or education for the prisoners — nothing but incarceration. The buildings were better than many of our prisons, but there were dark green punishment cells hewn in the rock. Miss Fry was told of one man who had been shut in the dark for sixty days. The prison she saw at New Mexico was a strong argument, she said, for securing some kind of international standard for the treatment of prisoners. It was intolerable to think that our national system should be used to send any man under an extradition back to such a hell as that. The prisoners were herded together in two courts, the one where the worst criminals were kept being simply a howling cage. The men seemed absolutely mad with imprisonment in such ciruumstances. From these courts ran corridors like little rabbit warrens, with small cells opening off them.