Prison Conditions

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 429, 12 September 1947, Page 5

Prison Conditions

E have received a pamphlet* from the , Howard a League for Penal Reform criticising conditions in New Zealand prisons. It is not a _ yiolent pamphlet, but it is sweeping, and we are asked to give it the widest possible publicity. This we are quite happy to do, but publicity is one thing and praise another. The problem of ‘the Howard League is! to get uncoloured evidence; the problem of those who read its pamphlets to know what value to give them. In the present case it makes several charges, all of which are serious if they are trie, but not one of which can be held to be proved. It charges prison medical officers with being casual and unsympathetic, and it is quite likely that some of them are; but it is not easy to believe that they all are. It complains that prisoners spend dreary weekends, and that no doubt is true; but it no sooner suggests that sport should be encouraged than it issues a solemn warping that games must not be made compulsory. Then it complains of the difficulty of "convincing the public that our penal authorities are making almost no effort to reform prisoners." The italics are ours, but if the complaint is well founded surely one reason is’ that the League has not the confidence of the public, or of a large enough section of the public to force the Government’s hand. While it would be a bad day for our prison population if the League ceased to be interested in them-especi-ally at the present time when most of us are too sorry for ourselves ‘to be thinking about prisonersit is a pity to see reformers turning querulous and sour. If the League can see nothing at all to praise in our prisons it should remember the lad who cried "Wolf!" *New Zealand Prisons: Conditions Exposed. Howard League for Penal Reform.