Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1911. SELF-SUPPORTING PRISONS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10215, 18 April 1911, Page 4

Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1911. SELF-SUPPORTING PRISONS.

Mr Justice' Grantiuv.n .attended the tneeting of the Livo-p-".?! Discharges! Prisoners' Aid Society recently, and in some comments on the treatment of prisoners advanced the theory that they should be self-supporting. The great question of the day, he said, was what would be the result of the alteration proposed by the Home Secretary for dealing with prisoners at the end of their sentence? Discharged prisoners required just as much assistance as convicts. He welcomed the removal of the necessity for ex-prisoners to report themselves; he had protested against this requirement for the last 35 years. "I do not think," he proceeded, "that our present reform system'is a good one for acting as a deterrent. I can assure you I look upon myself as the greatest fraud possible. Every day I pass sentence of hard labour. It is all nonsense. It is just the happiest state of their lives. There is just enough to do to keep them occupied. They know that they have got their food, clean bedding, clean washing, clean water, and plenty of the best food that can possibly be given them, and only just enough work to keep them in health. It is no punishment at all. The proper way is to get them to work on land, and make some arrangements whereby we can have farms for the sake of giving work to the prisoners. I would make every prison self-supporting, growing its own wheat and doing everything." He remembered when at Armley Gaol, Leeds, they ground on their own treadmill the whole of the flour for all the prisons round about. At Walton, Liverpool, they used to pump all the water. It was very hard work, and the prisoners did not like it, but that was what they wanted.