CATHOLICS AND CRIMINAL STATISTICS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 29, 16 July 1903, Page 6

CATHOLICS AND CRIMINAL STATISTICS

INTERVIEW WITH A PRISON CHAPLAIN

(From a correspondent.)

In view of the recent oft' repeated and as often repudiated assertions regarding the alleged preponderance of prisoneis in the gaols of the Colony described as Catholics, the following facts of actual experience were tendered to me at first hand by one who for some years has acted in the capacity of prison chaplain in one of the largest and — in the official eye — most important places of punishment and detention in New Zealand. The statistics (said my infoimant) which are officially compiled, and from which all manner of inaccurate and thoughtless statements are periodically gi\ en out by irresponsible persons with a motne to serve, are most misleading Ajnd here mv re\erend informant went on to endorse in its entirety the leading article which recently appeared in the ' Tahlet ' on tne subject. Ihi"ie passed through the pi ison under notice last year 751 persons, of whom 117 weie classified as Catholics And heie it is mteiestmg- to .see how soi-disant ' Catholic' prisoners are manulactured and to obser\e the utterly misleading nature oi official statistics so far as the particular matter under consideration is concorned. It is a recognised axiom in pi ison discipline that no matter what religion a peison la.\s claim toon entering, such is officially recorded as a matter of course, and whilst in gaol no person is allowed to change his or her reputed faith Many whom he found classified as Catholics were, when questioned, disco-vered to be Nothing of the Sort ; nor had they ever been. When asked why they had so designated themsehes, the leply was nearly always to this effect ' Well, you know, we supposed the chief gaoler o,r. some of the warders would be Catholics, and as we always thought theie was some sort of " freemasonry " existing amongst Catholics, they would not be unduly severe, and would ha\e easier times ' There are at the present time in this gaol about 130 persons It is a record number, and of these about 25 are reputed Catiholies. Of seven or eight of these the chaplain said : ' I am perfectly satisfied not one of them is a co-rehgionist of ours. They know absolutely nothing of Catholic doctrine ; they can furnish no evidence whatever of baptism ; they cannot name a pansh they e\ er belonged to , they cannot even attempt to make the Sign of the Cross. These are fair .specimens of a large class of the alleged " Catholic " criminals often met with in my experience and in the experience of mypiedecessors.' The following few instances will also pro\ c interesting : — One man, when detected in a false statement as to religion, said : ' Well, Father, as a matter of fact, I'm nothing, but mv wife is a Catholic, and if I was anything I would be one. and T knew that the priest, if he thought I was a Catholic, would help mv wife while I was here.' Another said, when questioned — he mentioned his parish and pai ish priest, but on enquiry being made it was pio\ed his wife was a Catholic but he himself never was — and moreover his better half only wished his sentence was twelve Instead of as many months. Numerous similar cases could be quoted. Again, a great percentage of Catholic inmates of the gaol are vrhat are known as ' In-and-out 's ' — ' social derelicts' — usually for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. And here, especially, where statistical inaccuracies occur. A long sentence prisoner, be he Anglican, Presbyterian, or Wesley an, counts one for every year of

his incarceration, whereas one Catholic who is ' sent up' perhaps once a month for some minor offence counts as twelve separate committals in the statistics for the year. And each one who is wrongly described counts really two against Catholics, because of his failure to be properly classified to his own religion. There is, it is said, one sect whose adherents make it a rule of faith, when sent to prison, to repudiate their religion. They are, in turn, repudiated by their co-religionists, and are generally ascribed to the Anglican Church, of which they are not members. My informant knows of three instances where notorious characters, representing themselves as Catholics, are convicted and sent to prison on an average once a month, thus constituting among them no fewer than 36 Catholic ' Criminals ' a year. Another, who is more a lunatic than criminal, provides another twelve, whilst there are always a number of foreign seafaring Catholic men swelling the number who are in for slight offences, some of which are unpunishable and go unnoticed in their own country. The very worst Catholic offender at the present time 'in the large gaol referred to is there for an offence committed whilst maddened with drink. He attributed drink and poverty primarily as the cause of all the trouble Catholics find themselves in. Your cool-headed Englishman or Scotchman gets drunk, and slinks off home quietly, if somewhat helplessly, whilst the hot-headed Celt commonly sets out in search of trouble, which he invariably finds, often at the cost of his hard-earned money and his liberty. The inmates of our prisons are increasing enormously. This increase is clearly attributable to the present Godless system of education. A great percentage of Catholics in our prisons, as my informant positively knows and declares, were Tutored in the State Schools ; many of them are still comparatively young ; and few, if any, of those it has been his duty to deal with, know much or anything of their religion, which therefore cannot be blamed for their plight. Catholic prisoners are, however, recognised as the most amenable to discipline, and, when once in gaol, are not often known to repeat prison offences. He (the chaplain) defies anyone, whether layman or clergyman of whatever denomination, to point to a single instance in which a Catholic prisoner has falsely described himself as an adherent of another creed. As a regular thimg>, ouri people are not ofjten proved guilty of the Grave Offences against society. The four worst prisoners at the present time in the prison referred to are Protestants. As pointed out in your leading article of July 2, the Irish penal code, the land laws, the destruction of the Irish manufacturing industries, and the systematic confiscar tion and impoverishment of the people in the land of their origin, have combined to leave among the Catholic population in New Zealand an altogether undue proportion of the poorer and poorest portion of its pt ople All that (said my reverend informant) is quite caused chiefly by their po\erty and their place in the caused chiefly by their po\erty and their place in the social scale |lf they were blessed with a more generous measuie of the world's eoods, crime, properly so called, would be almost as unknown among them as it is in Treland. As it is, statistics furnish no reason whatever for supposing that, even in the matter of petty offences, or misdemeanors, they stand at a disacUantage as compared with the same class among- other creeds. And when it comes to the grosser and more serious forms of crane, Catholics have, by comparison with all others, a singularly clean record.