THE NAMELESS ROLL!

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 89, 21 March 1916, Page 2

THE NAMELESS ROLL!

SOLDIERS FROM THE GAOLS. WIPING OUT THE PAST. The various public institutions are compiling rolls of honour on widen to inscribe the names of staffs, etc., who have gone out voluntarily to give service for their country. But there is one public institution in Auckland with a long roll of honour on which no name shall be inscribed (states the Star). Since the start of the war there have been between fifty and sixty men, whose names had been at more or less regular intervals inscribed on the roll of dishonour of Mount Helen Gaol, who have gone to the firing line. For several years prior to the war the average number on , the roll of those imprisoned- in Mxpmt Eden Goal stood at 290, and this average changed but little year after year,, the average of male prisoners being from 270 to 280. For the last six. months the average of male prisoners at the gaol ha s been between 210 and 220, showing a sudden and sustained decrease of between 50 and 60, .while the number of female prisoners has slightly increased. Last Saturday the number imprisoned weito males and 24 females. Questioned by a “Star” reporter concerning this decrease, the Gaoler, Mr A. Ironside, unhesitatingly affirmed that it was directly due to enlistments for the war. Be could vame off-hand, he intimated, quite a number of men who were regular habitues of the gaol who had gone on active service, and he pointed fo the fart that no less than seven gaols in Britain' had been closed sino6 the-wat-be-gin as indication that the experience at Mt. Eden was by no means exceptional. , Of course there need he no fear, or hope that, Mt. Eden gaol will go out of business, for it is one ol the gao ■> in which long-sentence prisoner*! Kr® concentrated, and it is the men doing long terms who keep the roll number up over 200. It is among the “transients ” to use an American boardmg!house * phrase, that the reduction has occurred.

The circumstances opens up an interesting little corner of sociology ami psychology for people with a bent that way. The experience that a ,n!UI whose nature causes him to be an unn'7 citizen in peace time usually makes the best class of fighting stuff h, war time, under direction, is no P ~l Vj but if does not appear, so far, to have been given any proper study. From the inside history of the gaols during the present crisis it may he possible for the earnest student ol psychology to perform a humanitarian service by evolving some more useful and humane method of dealing with persons whose destructive tendencies dominate their prudential instincts than by the present rough and ready method of just clapping them m gaol. Meantime, however, the gaol statistics are furnishing undeniable evidence that there are many men in the firing-line honourably expiating their peccadilloes of peace time.