The Waikato Argus GEORGE EDGECUMBE Proprietor. THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1897.

Waikato Argus, Volume III, Issue 160, 22 July 1897, Page 2

The Waikato Argus GEORGE EDGECUMBE Proprietor. THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1897.

The fact tbut it is only by persistency that reforms lire brought about affords reason for cur again returning to the subject of the nselessness and barbarity of imprisoning uicii and women afflicted with dipsomania. We now call the London Times to our assistance by publishing the following extract from an article published on June Nth on the Prisons Jlill then before the House of Commons, ft reads as follows : " It is to bo regretted that nothing is being done to remove a scandal greater than the evils which llic Prisons Bill seeks to cure. In our police-courts turn up semes of times the same offenders guilty of the same offences. Magistrates go through the farce of sentencing men or, more often, women for being drunk and disorderly with the certainty that the culprit will reappear in the dock a few days after the term of imprisonment is over. One notorious member of this class was, by the kindness of a police magistrate, put under the care of people win' exercised ovt r her a sort of mild coercion. She for a time disappeared from her old haunts. Her hitherto unbroken life of crime, or, to be inure accurate, madness, was interrupted. But being free, if she insisted, to go where she liked, she .-eon lelapsed into her old ways. It is a scandal that offenders should come up scores and even hundreds of times to recti vc sentences which everybody knows will be useless. The last committee which inouireil into this subject emphatically condemned the practice of treating these criminal lunatics as if they were amenable to ordinary motives. They ought, it was suggested, to be dealt with as sufferers from disease, and magistrates ought to be empowered to commit them for periods suflieh ntly lon if to give some chance of their being cured." It must now be accepted as a fact that it is possible by curative frcatnienl to restore dipsomaniacs to sound no ittill health. It is necessary, how. ever, that the treatment shall extend over a very much longer period than that Id which (lie unfoi'l unates are '-' iiniiilt.nl to our prisons by the Magistrates. The inhumanity and alisindii y of the. prevailing system is acknowledged on all hands, it is the monetaiy side of n„ , Jlu , s ,; 011 w | licll stands m the way 0 f re f o rm. To cany out the system which research and practice have proved to ],,. ~fj' l>c . the, entails the establishment of asylums or hospitals for inobrhtfos to" which sufferers with whom flic disease becomes chronic may be committed and retained until a certificate of cure is granted by the medical officer in charge. It would be quiiti reasonable that the patients should be liabl« for the cost of treatment, as all are now when treated for any other disease in our public hospitals. No doubt the expenses would

be in excess of the fees collectable, and provision would have (o be made for meeting the yearly deficiency, in addition to the initial cost of securir.fr suitable buildings and appliances. This wo maintain should not be allowed, for moral and political reasons, to stand in the way. The greatest source of colonial, and a largo proportion of revenue for local purposes, is derived from the drink traffic. The first, benefits by the high Customs duties, and the latter by the license foes paid by those who distribute alcohol to the people. Those who fall consequent on the prosecution of the trade, although their full is duo to a large extent to their own weakness, can certainly claim with equity that some of the revenue collected consequent on their weakness shall be npp'ied to remedying the evil which the traffic has created. Prohibition is an impossibility for a long time to come at any rate, so those who advocate this principle should support remedial measures, penning the time the lnillenium they look forward to is attainable. We admit the contention of the Prohibitionists that prevention is better than cure, but until prevention is practicable, the logical and moral mode of dealing with an evil is to provide means of modifying it. What is required is an Act giving power to magistrates to commit to Inebriate Asylums for such terms as (hey may think necessary to give a reasonable chance of cures, and the application of a portion of the liquor revenue to the purposes of the Act.