PRISON REFORM.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2572, 5 August 1909, Page 7

PRISON REFORM.

A PESSIMISTIC EXPERT.

, WHO CAN BE SAVED?

“Prison reform is in the >air at the present time;” said anjold and experienced official to an Post” representative. “One cannot help admiring the desire of the Minister of Justice to bring about an improved condition of things,” he added, “but no one who has had any experience has ar I great deal of hope that he will achieve any very great results. “You see,” he continued, “I’m a pessimist on this subject, not from a natural tendency to pessimism, but from having kept my eyes open during my official life. The 'reformation of some criminals is absolutely impossible. They have started out with the idea that they are up against society, that law and order/are their natural enemies. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. But —and here is the trouble —they don’t want to be reformed. They may pretend, but it will only be pretence, and at the best the pretence will only be actuated by a desire to make their conditions a bit better. That is the worst type—the criminal by instinct. Ho refuses to be reformed, and he is the biggest class in our ga-ols. What is left? Thero is tlio young man who lias,; through reasons which can easily bo imagined, got into trouble. This class are not criminals. But for the fact that society demands retribution, such people might just as well be discharged without a conviction. They would never, no never, go wrong again, the one experience was sufficient. In fact—and I speak from experience—it would be far better to let some of them go at once. A week, a month, six months in gaol often works wonders. You don’t know what gaol is like—one unending monotonous confined routine, hour after hour, and loneliness in a badly-lit cell, hour after hour at the same kind of work in the open, under the vigilant eye of a warder, consorting with men whose only ambition it has become to prove themselves something worse than merely a criminal. Fancy six or twelve months of that for a temporary lapse. “There is no need for prison reform in such cases,” the expert went on to say. “They can be reformed by complete liberty and the chance to go straight. Every day in gaol is not so much a punishment as an increase of the possibility of their becoming hardened and acclimatised. Put them on a farm, if you like, but, farm or no farm, get them away from the confinement of the gaol and the iron system which, though humane in its way, is so ill-destroying in its very essence. “The man you can get at,” he continued. “is the semi-larrikin, the cig-arette-victim street loafer, the young man who is degenerating into a wastrel, not. so much from his own criminal instincts, but because he is street-bred, accustomed to doubtful surroundings at least, and a promising scholar in the academy whose graduate course is burglary and possibly crimes of violence. That’s the only man Dr. Findlay will get at. He needn’t worry about the other man—the criminal by choice. Any old warder can pick him out, and every old warder knows that it is only a waste of time to worry about him. The man of the first and last offence is also easily discoverable. That leaves only the street corner loafer. Get hold of him, make him work, work, work. Teach him to plough and sow and reap and mow. Tell him straight that he has one chance, and one chance only; that if he likes he can learn a useful calling, and be >a respectable member of the community. But don’t forget to impress on him the fact that he has only one chance, and that if he doesn’t accept it he will be placed absolutely outside the pale of society—that society has no time for him, and that he will shortly —after, say one more lapse, dir appear from public view until his name is only to be found on the burial records of the gaol. In the long run such a course would be kinder. “Do not think,” he concluded, “that my experience of gaols has made me callous. It has only given me experience. You are too sentimental. You are wasting your time and your money and your sympathy, There’s no need to be harsh. Give every man one big chance. Let him know the alternative. Treat him kindly. Make him physically strong, and as mentally strong as you can, and if he rejects the offer shut him up for the rest of his natural life. Under such a system you would, in five years, reduce your criminal class by 50 per cent., and the cost of administration would be lessened in proportion.”