Holidays for Prisoners: A German Scheme

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 798, 19 October 1929, Page 18

Holidays for Prisoners: A German Scheme

RUSSIA, once notorious in Germany and elsewhere for its stern disciplinary system of education, has surprised its old critics by formulat-

ing a new method of treating prisoners. The new code, which has just been published, was adopted after cooperation between legal and medical members of a special reform committee on penology. Beginning with a medical diagnosis of each case, which is in turn based upon social and economic data showing the conditions under which the offender progressed into a life crime, the convicts are graded into three classes and assigned to separate houses of detention, where different methods of discipline and treatment prevail.

In the first class is the “hard case" —the old offender and inveterate criminal. Where such cases reveal contributory; circumstances, such as

j early influences and backgrounds j which helped to mould a criminal, the prisoner will undergo three of ! treatment. I

Iu the first he will get as much hard work of a productive and interest nature as he can physically P er , he and receive few privileges; in . second period he will get more P • leges, and in the third he will, 11 has learned a trade and gives evl “® . . of having regained a normal so attitude and self-respect, become candidate for release, to take up a he position in the world where be once maladjusted. Prisoners sentenced to short are graded into the second and t - classes, with the same privileges, a are respectively allowed periods vacation from prison annually, second grade obtaining a week, may be taken at intervals. For life prisoners who have their way by industry and a goo psychological condition to the second and third classes, these v« ' tions will keep them in touch human life and affairs and mitig® the cruel conditions of their sentence •