THE PROPOSED CENTRAL PENAL ESTABLISHMENT.

West Coast Times, Issue 332, 16 October 1866, Page 3

THE PROPOSED CENTRAL PENAL ESTABLISHMENT.

The Select Committee of Parliament appointed to report upon the expediency, of establishing a Central Penal Establishment for New Zealand, have expressed an opinion adverse to that project in the present financial circumstances of the .colony. The report is as follows :— Your Committee have carefully considered the matter referred to them, and have collected returns from the several provinces showing the accommodation now furnished by the gaols throughout the colony, their general condition, the number 'of prisoners confined in these gaols, ,and the cost of maintaining and guarding such prisoners. Your Committee have also beeu favored with the evidence of seven Superintendents of provinces as to- the extent to , which the erection of a Central Penal Establishment would affect the provision now required for the safe custody and maintenance of criminals, in their several -provinces. Your Committee find that the cost of maintaining and guarding prisoners in the provincial gaols is not much in excess of -what it would probably be in a central prison, and that at" present the labor of the prisoners is generally utilised to a very considerable extent.. Your committee are satisfied, however, that undar present arrangements there exists, and must continue to exist, a deficiency in the proper classification of criminals, as well as an absence of such? discipline as is calculated to make their imprisonment a reformatory, or even an effectually penal process. Although your ' committee believe that some saving jn expense might be effected by confining in a general penal establishment all^criminals sentenced to lengthened periods of imprisonment; yet looking to v the cost of conveyiug them .to the central prison in the first instance, and of returning them on their release to •the provinces from which they came, as well as to the necessity for still keeping up in the several provinces proper esta- ■ blishraents for prisoners under sentence for short periods, and for those awaiting ' their- trial — your. Committee do not think that the real saving to be effected in expense would be considerable in amount, and there would be loss in the amount of value obtained from the employment of prison labor in works of utility. On the other hand, the cost of erecting buildings sof sufficient extent, and completeness, for a Central £enal Establis'iment, would be very large, 'exceeding, ,as your Committee are informed, one hundred thousand pounds in amount. Several localities have been sug- • gested to your Committee as available and advantageous sites for a large^prison, and public works of considerable extent have been suggested upon which the prisoners might be usefully employed. Assuming-,' however, that the existing financial condition of the cblony is not such as to warrant auy considerable outlay of public money on other than iddispensable objects, your committee are not .prepared to recommend that the erection of a " Ceutral Prison should be undertaken at the present time." " .