DURANCE VILE.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17972, 18 March 1930, Page 9

DURANCE VILE.

PRISON REFORM

ENCOURAGING RESULTSOLD SYSTEM SCRAPPED. Durance vile has given place in New Zealand to durance hopeful, according to Dr. L. 11. Gribben, for some years superintendent of Waikcria Borstal Institute. Speaking before a gathering of Rotarians at Hamilton yesterday on the modern conception of the criminal, Dr. Gribben said that under the old prison system where the prisoners were set to picking oakum and walking the treadmill, more criminals were made inside than outside the prisons. There was, he added, nothing so depressing or calculated io make a man desperate as the knowledge that the work he was doing was utterly futile. “If you want to kill a man’s interest in life,' stifle his social instincts,” said the doctor. Yet that was what the old prison system in many cases did. The modern treatment of the criminal, he held, was a great improvement on the old from almost every standpoint, although there might be a tendency on the part of some organisations advocating prison reform to carry things a little too far the other way.

Discipline Main Essential. Tlie do-etor insisted that discipline was the main essential of any prison system. It must not be forgotten that a criminal was such by reason of the fact that he lacked discipline in some direction and he got into gaol because of that fact. Some modern enthusiasts for prison reform overlooked this, however.

The speaker paid a tribute to the late Charles Matthews, former Comptroller of Prisons, as the pioneer of prsion reform in New Zealand. To him was attributable the amenities of prison life and the gleam of hope which shone for the modern prisoner in New Zealand. It was he who instituted the ‘•honour system,” which was a complete reversal of the old system under which a man’s honour was never put to the test. Formerly the prisoner was watched and guarded and the responsibility of holding him was with the warders. Dr. Gribben said he had the pleasure of working the first of the institutions under the honour system, and the results had proved remarkable. As soon as an inmate had got used to his new surroundings he was placed on his honour. He was entrusted with a certain freedom and to do certain work and was given a measure of responsibility. Soon the man who hitherto had been spending his life dodging the law, who was furtive, evasive and indirect, lifted his head and grew gradually square and outright. The honour system had, in fact, proved most encouraging to both the officials and the prisoners. The proportion of men who left the institute and who found work and who did not return was, he said, very large. Effect of Environment. The effect of environment as a factor in the making of criminals was emphasised by the speaker, who said that a criminal could reform under present prison conditions, whereas ins social life ouiside the prison had bred crime In him. The doctor commented upon the difficulty which the prison authorities experienced in finding employment for discharged prisoners owing to the reluctance of employers to engage such men. As a community the men who assembled in the gaols were most interesting and were sportsmen in the best sense of the term. After all, it required grit to take a chance against long odds like most of them had done. The sense of honour in reaction to the trust reposed in them was also great and, he thought, excelled that to be found in the average assemblage of respectable citizens. The speaker also referred lo the keen ' sense of humour possessed by the i average prisoner. He paid a tribute! to the work of the Prisons Board, which body, he thought, had thoroughly justified its existence.