GOING TO PRISON IS MERELY HIS “HOBBY.”

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 379, 10 March 1937, Page 2

GOING TO PRISON IS MERELY HIS “HOBBY.”

ENGLISH EXPERT.

Inside Information of Gaols in Britain and Abroad. A few weeks ago he set sail from England—the man with the world queerest “hobby.” He is Mr Alexander Paterson, and his “hobby” is—going to gaol. Even the most hardened “old lag’* the London Sessions has known would be a mere tyro compared vith Mr Paterson, in the matter of inside knowledge of prison life. So fond of gaol is this robust, middle-aged ex-school teacher that he is now travelling thousands of miles to the West Indies and South America to see for himself how convicts are treated in those parts. Going “inside” fc- pot only a “heibby” with “Pat,” as he is affectionately known to thousands of convicts and ex-convicts all over the world. It is a lob of work as veil. At one of the best-known and most energetic of His Majesty’s Prison Commissioners, and Dircctbr of Convict Prisons, he hat visited every gaol in Britain, as well as scores in America and other parts of the world. “An Accident.” ■“I hope to go to Deni’s Island on th it trip,” lie said. “ I am seeking permission from the J reach Government *to do so. 1 shall have to present a report to the Colonial Office on my return on the conditions in British prisons in tihe colonies.. “I became a prison commissioner more or less by accident,” he went on. “It was my connection -with the Borttai Association, and advocacy of prison reform that led me th this job.” On occzusion “Pat” has been known to wear the Borstal “school tie.” He is a mine of information on everything that has to do with the Borstal tystem. Following the famous “mutiny” at Dartmoor, he assumed command at the prison, and ! by bij tactl and diplomacy and hard work, he helped very greatly in the task of making peace there. His report on what he sav 1 and the conclusions he reached after his visit to Sing Sing and other famous American prisons created a great sensation in the United Stat:s. In Sing Sing he met several notorious gangsters. “Jack Diamond and Al Capone were not then ‘inside’,” he said, “but I was given every facility for interviews prisoners privately. I came to the conclusion that Englishmen convicted in America receive real justice. I spoke wfth a number of them.” But Mr Paterson also saw loth* of things that surprised, and some that horrified, him. Mediaeval Methods. He saw men chained to gates, for eight hours, and other men v.'ho were confin’ d in dark cells for a w^-e 1 * He was shown another man who had been kept in his cell for eight years “I had many surprises,” he said “One of the most starting of thes' was when a man serving a life sentence drove me 170 miles to a certain town—and then returned alone to his prison!” Mr Paterson baa laid it do”‘a that three things are necessary in commission of every crime. “There is first the denire to do something wrong.” he has said “This is a desire that everybody has had at tome time or other. “Secondly, there must be the opportunity to satisfy that desire And thirdly, absence of any strong urge to ths contrary.”