WHERE NATURE BARS ROAD TO FREEDOM

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 532, 8 December 1928, Page 30

WHERE NATURE BARS ROAD TO FREEDOM

CONVICTS’ EARTHLY HELL The French Salvation Army wants to start, a mission among the penal settlements in French Guiana. The groat problem from the Salvation Army point of view is the employment of the convicts w’ho have served their time, but are sentenced not to return to France—and very often, also not to settle in the town of Cayenne. These unfortunate men are thus condemned to what is virtually deportation for life to a completely unfertile penal farm. There are about 3,000 of this class who lead a life of real despair, for they have nothing to hope for, and the object of the Salvation Army is to provide a centre with workshops, a night refuge and an employment agency. The prison authorities are considering the scheme. Ensign Pean, who has just returned to Paris from Guiana, where he has spent some months studying the conditions, saw Dr. Bougrat, who was condemned to a life sentence for murdering a patient at Marseilles, and recently escaped. He was employed in the prison hospital, and when questioned preserved complete silence. This, says Ensign Pean, is an infallible sign on the part' of a convict of an impending attempt to escape. Escaped convicts, if caught in Dutch Guiana and not in possession of a sum of 1,200 francs, are returned to the French authorities. Then they are sent to a penal station on one of the islands, where they never have a chance of escape—the sharks are their warders. The supervision of the convicts on the mainland is known to be distinctly slack. Convicts determined to escape can generally find an opportunity to do so, and can save enough money for the attempt, which they conceal in their clothing. The prison governors and warders are content with the natural deterrents as a guard—hunger, thirst, wild beasts, poisonous snakes, and Indian tribes, that menace the runaways every hour with death, and generallv catch them. Stories too horrible to be printed are told of the fate of some escaped convicts from French Guiana.