CRIME IN THE COLONIES. INTERVIEW WITH THE GOVERNOR OP PENTRIDGE. Christchurch, May 20.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 370, 22 May 1889, Page 5

CRIME IN THE COLONIES. INTERVIEW WITH THE GOVERNOR OP PENTRIDGE. Christchurch, May 20.

Mr John Gale, who, after 38 years' prison experience in Victoria, has just resigned the position of governor of Pentridge penal establishment, was interviewed here while on his way to England. He said that gaols were positively valueless for reformatory purposes. This effect he attributed to the want of classification and to the hereditary character of criminals. He was also emphatic in his condemnation of mixing children of virtuous and vicious parents in our reformatories. Such systems made these institutions nurseries of crime. The worst prisoners ever under his control at Pentridge were thoseeducated in reformatories. It was a great mistake, in hisopinion to march prisoners through the public street, as t hesaw was done at Lyttelton. That familiarised persons with crime, and led the criminally disposed to think that gaol was not such a bad place after all. The practice which prevails in this colony of trying persons in public for offences committed against the gaol regulations was a direct encouragement to insubordination. In Australia, the larrikins were taking the places of old prisoners, and were even worse than they were. The chief cause of crime was that it was hereditary, but he thought the political system in the colonies tended to encourage it. The First Offenders' Act was a good one, but it should be exercised with great discretion.