The Dunedin Gaol.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 20, 30 March 1870, Page 3

The Dunedin Gaol.

I (Melbourne Aryus.) ThemfSudy asaault which waa perpetrated }u 'Melbourne a few days ago upon • a sergeant and constable in the police force, by the ringleaders of a gang of " roughs," and the information which has reached ua with respect to the organization and audacity of these social pests, invito us to consider whether the criminal law affecting this class of offenders might not be beneficially amended, so as to render it a real terror to all such evil-doers, iu the particular case referred to, the two delinquents were each tined £2O, and in default of paymeit, were'committed to prison for three months, but the condition of hard labour was not annexed to the punishment, as it would have entitled them to a better description of fare. To men of this stamp, however, we fear that the privation of liberty for a few weeks will not present itself as a very formidable penalty, and that they will return to their old lawless habits as soon as they are released. They belong to one of the most dangerous classes in the community : that from which our thieves are recruited. This class is incorrigibly idle, if not irreclaimably vicious. Many of its members live on the miserable earnings of prostitutes, of whom they are the nominal protectors, and very often the brutal tyrants. They prey upon society, and are at wai with its official guardians. Their lives are not governed by the ordinary motives of human conduct; and in dealing with them it would be aa great a mistake to be ruled by sentimental and humanitarian consideration as it would be to expect a mustang of the pampas to be amenable, the moment he is lassoed, to the same dicipline as a domesticated hackney. The " rough" holds three things in hor-ror—h-trd work, pergonal restraint, and low fare. We should bear this in mind when devising an appropriate punishment for his transgressions of the Lw. He is a loafer by nature, an outlaw by choice, and self-indulgent by reason of the depraved appetites lie has inherited or acquired. Imprison him for a. lengthened term, compel him to labor strenuously, and supply him with the plain, coarse food he should have previously earned, and you may succeed in partially taming the wild beast which is in him. and in deterring him from a repetition of the offences which have provoked so odious a form of punishment. As it is, a, couple of "roughs'* may half-murder a policeman, and may be let off on paying £2O ; and their ability to do this depends upon whether they have recently hocussed and robbed some unwary digger or shepherd who. has come down to Melbourne " on the spree." But supposing the delinquents to be short of money, they will spend three months of idleness in prison, and every industrious man in the community must contribute his quota to their support. Thus society sustains a double wrong. It. is injured by the outrage on the guardians of the peace, and it is impoverished by the drain upon its resources which results from the maintenance of some hundreds of malefactors in sheer idleness. Outside of prison they were loafers, and inside they are no better. We may not be able altogether to extirpate the first of these evils, although we riiay mitigate it very materially; but we may abolish the second. We may compel every ablebodied inmate of our gaols and similar institutions to earn the entire cost of his sustenance and shelter, as well as of the watch and ward which we are compelled to keep over him; Our fellow-colonists in Otago—much to their credit—have set us an excellent example in this respect, and it is gratifying to observe that the governor of the gaol, Mr James Caldwell, by whom this valuable reform was introduced, is an old officer from Pentridge, where a similar system had been introduced by Colonel Champ, who, labouring under the double disadvantage of being a zealous and efficient head of the department, and a gentleman, was got rid of by the late Government. We have now lying before us a departmental report from the governor of the Dnnedin Gaol, dated the 14th April last, and relating to the financial transactions of the previous year. Mr Caldwell says : " For the first time since the erection of the gaol, the value of the labor of the prisoners during the year 1868 more than covered the entire expenditure of the establishment. It has never been surpassed or equalled in the previous history of the gaol, without taking into consideration.the labour of such prisoners as were engaged in prison employment, such as cooking, washing, cleaning, <fec, and various other works connected with the gaol. But highly jatisfactory as was this result, the returns of labour performed during the year are still more encouraging, the average value of each prisoner's labor having been considerably in excess of the preceding year. The expenditure of the gaol for the year ending 31st March ulfc. was £7385 2s Bd. The value of the prisoners' labor was £8778 3s 7d, which is £1393 0s lid in excess of the total expenditure," The public works upon which the prisoners were engaged were those of dredging the harbor, making jetties, reclaiming swamps, and constructing roads. Such of the men as were artisans were employed in their respective trades, fkwue of tiie,

labor, we are told, was . very severe, especially during the winter mouths, when the convicts wore working, week after week, in deep and teuacious mud. Compulsory occupation of this kind, we take it. would be admirably adapted to tone down the exuberant energies of our Melbourne roughs, and to make them "sadder and wiser men." Even the iuconveniouces which might be expoeted to rise from the. defective dormitory accommodation in the Duuedin Gaol do not occur, because (says Mr Caldwell) the prisoners are so fatigued by their work that .they sleep soundly, without giving any cause for complaint or disorder. Upon the goneral question of prison discipline, Mr Caldwell makes the following sensible remarks, while he briefly refers to, and effectually refutes, the vulgar error that the employment of prison labor is hostile to the interests of the working classes, who are taxed for the support of our penal establishments : " No system of prison discipline will be perfect that does not render the comfort and well being of the prisoner pra'ctically dependent upon his own exertions, and that does not bring home to him the fact that he must either work or want. If prisoners were fed and housed, permitted indulgence, or spared from punishment only in exact proportion to the exact amount of bonajide work they performed, it would soon tell beneficially upon themselves as well as upon the public. But it should be downright honest work, capable of commanding its full price. There is not the slightest ground for the fallacy which lias at times been dinned into the ears of the working classes, that remunerative prison -labour can beenc uraged only at the expmse of honest free labour outside. It mu3t be remembered that prisoners, if at liberty, would either be competing honestly with other free labourers, or appropriating the profits of honest labour without working at all; so that is is a positive gain to society to provide that they shall not live absolutely in criminal idleness. Thus the economical argument ii altogether in favour of getting as much work as" possible out of the prisoners. I prefer the modern idea of encouraging—and of neccessity compelling —the prisoner to work, or take the consequences in personal.-punishment or privation." With these sentiments we cordially concur, and we congratulate the pe»ple of Otago on the fact that they have a gaoler who reduces such enlightened principles to convincing practice, and that the Government of the Province is sufficiently sagacious and courageous to authorise that functionary in carrying out a system of penal discipline which makes the " devil's regiment" self-supporting, and exempts the community from an onerous burden.