TREATMENT OF DRUNKARDS IN QUEENSLAND.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2115, 23 October 1890, Page 4

TREATMENT OF DRUNKARDS IN QUEENSLAND.

Serious complaints are made in a Sydney paper because of the lamentable absence of a prison in Arrilalah, in Queensland, where the authorities have made no effort to keep pace with the progressive spirit of the age. The principal offence of the district is intemperance, which is manifest in Arrilalah at all hours of the day. A correspondent writing on the subject says that the unwholesome “ drunk ” has to be chained to a log by the roadside and there he prances and jumps and howls in the ears of the passers-by until his sentence expires.

He suggests, therefore, that either a lock-up should be built or that the drunk should be chained up in a secluded spot, where the profuseness of his vocabulary will not excite so much public comment, and theoretically no doubt bis idea is a good one. But unhappily the small bush town, as a rule, can’t afford the ornamental superfluity of a gaol; and if the police gob into the habit ot chaining up the plain unvarnished drunk in a lonely

spot where' nobody could hear' him curse, they would never be able to find him again when his term was put. The average, drunk would simply be left there and lost, and about forty years later someone would come across a skeleton wriggling insanely at the end of a rusted chain and a decaying stamp. i i> . The citizens of Arrilalah thinkit lamentable that the wearied policeman should have no place to ptit a catch who is ' simply tied up to’ spine fixed object,'where there a reasonable chance of finding him again before the whole nation was extinct. Besides, the flies worry a criminal. ; Something should certainly bo done, as so large a part of the population is cpncerhed.