FOOTBALL IN GAOL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 457, 12 September 1928, Page 14

FOOTBALL IN GAOL

“DIEHARDS” AND “HOUSEMAIDS” REFORMING PRISONERS There is a football competition which, though it is followed with great enthusiasm, gets little publicity. The teams are “Jasper’s Own,” “the Diehards,” ‘‘Professor Moriarty’s Thugs and Gunmen,” and “The Housemaids.” Players and supporters are at present at the Mount Eden Gaol. How football was helping to reform criminals was explained by the assistant-city missioner, the Rev. Charles Chandler, in an address on “Prevention and Cure” to the Karangaliape Road Business Promotion Society’s meeting yesterday. Mr. Chandler said it was impossible to understand one’s fellow men so well that they might be pigeon-holed. He was just as much perplexed over the problem of the criminal now as he was seven years ago. The perplexing congregation at Mount Eden consisted of 400 men and a few women. About 200 men received his constant attention. At the prison there were Shakespearean and elasical scholars, Biblical students, atheists and men of all kinds of learning. Some of their conversation was intensely interesting. His work was to clean up the mental households of the people there, not o-%.v in religion, because life was far too big to be put into a pigeon-hole, even of religion. DOING GOOD “If you knew the amount of good football has done in the prison you would be surprised,” he said. “The captain of the ‘Diehards’ is an habitual criminal, and he tells me that he has got to work out his burgling like a business man, by opening a ledger account. He says he is not a successful business man. "Some of the men boast that they liuve an income of £ 300 a year while they are in prison, not from prison pay, but because a job done before they went in has been invested.”

Mr. Chandler explained that the name of the team called “Moriarty’s Thugs and Gunmen” was due to a Sherlock Holmes sketch, which was

given by entertainers at the prison. He himself was the professor.” The speaker outlined the causes of criminality, saying that the main ones were the economic, domestic and social conditions. Weakened home influences was one cause, and it would be much better for the community if it re turned to the home life of former generations.

The salvation of many men who left the prison was wrapped up in the second chance they were given. A weed was but a plant out of place, and a criminal was often a man who had strength gone in a wrong direction. Mr. Chandler outlined a scheme for an institution for discharged prisoners. By this means they would be allowed gradually to percolate back into society.