BRITISH PRISONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 July 1938, Page 5

BRITISH PRISONS

CHANGES IN ACCORDANCE WITH MODERN IDEAS ANNOUNCED BY HOME SECRETARY. AMELIORATE THE CONVICT’S LOT. By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. • LONDON, July 28. The Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, has announced drastic changes to ameliorate the lot of prisoners and to keep them in closer touch with the outside world. Henceforth, he said, prisoners would be allowed to interview friends in civilian clothes and mix together on Saturday afternoons in order to break down the evil of too great solitude. • Certain convicts will be transferred to local ■ prisons to ’ enable them -to keep in closer touch wittt/their families. ' Women prisoners are to have betterlooking and better-fitting clothes, so as to increase their self-respect. Both long-term and short-term prisoners will be paid wages and given further opportunities for physical training, reading, and recreation, including cinemas. The programme of reconstruction of obsolete prisons includes the destruction of the famous Pentonville Prison. Referring to the figures of juvenile delinquency, from the increase in which over the last few years disquieting deductions are sometimes made. Sir Samuel Hoare expressed the opinion that the increase was no more than was accounted for by the operation of the 1932 Young Persons Act, under which convictions were more willingly recorded. Sir Samuel foreshadowed important plans for new prison accommodation more suited to modern ideas of penal administration. In particular hfe expressed a desire to see a new women’s prison in place of Holloway Gaol. The new prison would be something entirely different and more in the nature of a camp in the country, in which women prisoners would live in small house communities with opportunities for open-air work. Under these plans Pentonville would make way for a much-needed housing estate.