The Daily News. FRIDAY, JANUARY 20. LET'S GO TO GAOL!

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 228, 20 January 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JANUARY 20. LET'S GO TO GAOL!

A highly interesting interview with the gaoler at Invercargill was lately jjublished in the Southland Times. After a perusal of it, is is obvious that gaols generally are becoming high-class seminaries. It cannot yet be definitely decided whether the course of education will lead to a struggle among New Zealand [youths to undergo a course of prison study—but one. hopes not. The gaoler mentioned that courses in shorthand, chemistry, electrical engineering, and music have been taken up by prisoners and that one youth had taken a very high position in his examinations. It is hoped that youths on the right side of the wall will not become envious of the opportunities of those on the wrong side and so qualify for admission to the scholastic interior. It will be interesting to observe whether a course of electrical engineering taken in gaol will cure a bias for burglary on release of the student; if a "pass" in chemistry will obviate a desire to indulge in false preand whether a degree in music will decide a criminal to lead a better; life. If so, it is obvious that every, inmate, of a gaol should be given an opportunity of becoming a B.A. or a B.Sc, or even a D.D. Under the present system, however, only the prisoner whose friends are able to keep the necessary payments up can take the higher education cure, although the humblest and most poverty-stricken criminal may indulge in primary education under the gaol authorities. If a course of chemistry is going to place the son of a merchant on the narrow path, a course of chemistry should be available to the son of the laborer who has gone wrong. Indeed, the education cure—if it is a cure—is likely to be more useful in its application to the wholly uneducated than it would be to the son of well-to-do parents, who could apply the medicine education equally well, whether the patient was on this side of the wall or on the other ; side. The public has. every reason to be deeply concerned about its criminal units, and every means that can be taken to lessen the percentage by eliminating taint is worthy. If scholastic studies, therefore, cure criminals belonging to well-to-do families, scholastic studies will cure the taint in criminals with no chances. We are as dubious on the point as would an engineer be who was advised to plug up a hole in a steam-chest with tissue paper, but the logic is sound enough. Therefore, the large-hearted public, if education by correspondence is found to be a cure for burglarious conduct, false pretences and other crimes, should at once insist that Bill Sykes gets the same medicine as Vavasour Tracy Delamain. We do not believe that chemistry will cure either Bill or Vavasour, but if the people have a suspicion that the authorities have stumbled on a cure for crime, they should treat Bill and Vavasour alike. If Vavasour's parents supply money so that he may become free from crime, the public might be asked to supply money in order that Bill's trouble should be mended. The gaoler whose remarks are the subject of these, believes apparently that the inhabitants of New Zealand gaols are mere amateurs in crime, and that, being superior clay to the gentlemen at Pentridge or Dartmoor, or any of those seminaries in a distant island, should be handled with greater care. "A much harder type of criminal is met with in England th.vi in New Zealand," said he. Murder U murder whether it happens in Invercargill or Hounsditch; false pretences are just as false at Waitara as in Edinburgh; and burglary is house-breaking whether it is done by Vavasour in Palmerston North or Mr. Sykes in Lambeth. The problem in New Zealand is not as big as in Britain, but it is the same kind of problem, no matter what gaolers say or do not say. Variations of methods are only admirable if they remove criminal taint, Without this all attempts are futile. We are called upon to admire means and not results. The gaoler mentioned, in endeavoring to show that in comparison with the wild beast of the British gaols—the New Zealand student would eat from the hand, so to speak—said that the Borstal system would be more serviceable in New Zealand than in Britain, because of the "hardness" of the British criminal. If the Borstal system will cure the gentle New Zealand "habitual," it will cure the "hardest" case in Dartmoor. That is to say, it is just as necessary that the system of gently shepherding a discharged prisoner into a job and carefully helping him afterwards to overcome his criminal tendency in one country as another. The whole point is that a prisoner might come out of gaol with all the learning of the ages stowed under his hat and yet be incapable of resisting temptation. Criminals commit crime not so much for gain as because of the impulse to commit crime and the joy of committing it.. The educational system which induces in the criminal mind a horror of crime is the system that will give results. The task is stupendous. ■ It is the task of inducing a carnivorous animal to believe that meat is injurious; to wean a horse from his habit of eating grass; to convince the tree that its bark is useless. It is the task of making the ocean saltless, growing grapes on fir trees, and peaches underground. It is a problem that has remained unsolved since the days of Cain; it is the business of killing age-old instincts, sporadic mania, irresistible impulses, deep-seated disease. Tt is a worthy work, infinitely alluring to the man who is able to understand the bases of crime. We do not know how crime originates. Sometimes we say that such and such a man became a criminal because he was a drunkard,

We might reason with equal conclusion that a man became a saint because he drank ginger-'beer. We are, therefore, asked l to apply a degree in chemistry to a burglar in order to make him a guiltless citizen, but up to now nobody has suggested stone-breaking as a cure for enteric fever. If a matriculation pass is a cure for sheep-stealing, the making of i coir mats should be tried for curvature of the spine. If higher education is given in gaols in order to cure crime, higher education administered outside gaol should keep the student out of gaol. Therefore apply the medicine as a preventative and do not .waitmntil it is required as a remedy. And please do not get into the habit of believing that New Zealand criminals are "superior." It is the kind of fallacy very dear to many folk. We may be superior to everybody else, but everybody else does not believe it because <we say so. The proof of the contention in regard to criminals can only come from demonstration by results.