THE PACIFIC ISLANDS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 170, 25 April 1872, Page 3

THE PACIFIC ISLANDS.

Probably when the whole of the Pacific Islands are in possession of a foreign power it will be discovered that we might have profitably utilised one or more of them as convict settlements. The timo will assuredly come when Australian governments will be puzzled what to do with the criminal population ; _ when public opinion will recognise that it is better to give the convict an opportunity of reforming by honest labor, than by shutting him up within the four walls of a prison, and condemn him to break a certain quantity of stone per day until his sentence expires, and he is thrust forth again with the prison brand upon him, to prey upon society. There is absolutely nothing that partakes of a reformatory character in our method of dealing with prisoners. We punish them for the crimes they commit, hut do not seek to make them better men ; and our criminal statistics tell the result. Of 8,848 prisoners under confinement in 1870, as many as 3,883 had been previously convicted—some twice, some thrice, and precisely the same process of fostering crime and breeding criminals is going on at this moment. The experiment was made by the Indian government a few years ago of transporting a large body of convicts, under strong military guard, to a barren and isolated piece of territory in the Punjaub. There the prisoners were given the option of submitting to seveic penal discipline, or taking a ticket of leave and going to work for their own benefit to reclaim the waste land. To a man they chose the latter alternative ; they became animated with the spirit of emulation, and in a few years they had changed nut only the whole face of the country, hut their own characters. They had found something worth living and even working for ; they were the possessors of property, and it was their interest to he honest. What India could do, certainly A u =tralia ought to he able to accomplish ; hut it is to be feared that so long as wc have men at the head of the penal department who have no broader conception of what isdemanded ed of them than tint tiny should follow the old Tasmanian practice, ttiere is little chance of much amendment of our penal system as woulu bring about thd reform of criminals, and lessen the enormous expenditure incurred annually for the maintenance of gaols and police.— Leader.