PRISON LABOR.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 227, 27 November 1888, Page 2

PRISON LABOR.

The New Zealanu Herald has taken up this subject with vigor, and speaks strongly against the prevailing officialism which will not admit of prison labor being put to some profitable use. Ou?contemporary thinks that the Mqtu-Ihi island could be converted into, a field for the employment of this labor, but in such a way that it would be considered a reward for a* convict to be placed there instead of being penned up in Mount Eden. The subject, it believes, may be considered without any reference to the question as to whether prison labor would be brought into compe'ition with that of other laborers, and it concludes a long article as follows“ It is a burning shame that such an amount of industrial energy should be allowed to go to waste, and that the honest and hard-work ing members of society should be heavily taxed to pay the cost of the keep of the idle and dissolute, who have not unfrequently a easier and happier time of it than thousands of the toiling masses without, who are hard struggling to put honest food in the mouths of their families ; and it is disgraceful that official indolence—for nothing else is the O’.use of it—should be allowed to continue the thriftless and waseful way in which our prisoners arc maintained at the cost of society. The difficulty of restraint is simply a pretence. Prisoners are as amenable to rewards and punishments as freemen ; but it is much easier for gaolers to rely on bolts and bars, than to trouble their heads with the springs of action that are in all human beings, hardly excepting even the most debased By making life within the walls at Mount Eden sufficiently deterrent, and the penalty attaching to attempting to escape from the penal farm real, and not a shaft! ; by making life on the farm a reward for good behaviour, and by using ordinary precautions against escape, the prisoners would be brought to render their tale of labor cheerfully. In Canada it appears to be valued only five per cent, less than the labour of freemen; but, if it were thirty per cent. le-3 valuable, the 'sucoess we have indicated would be attainable and worth the effort. In the sister colony of New South Wales prisoners are employed in constructing roa 's in new country, and even remote districts ; but there,las well as in Canada, somebody in authority has evidently broken away from the conventionalism of prison lore, and has dared to think as a layman ; and from the spirited manner in which the matter has been taken up in the Legislative Council of Victoria, we may anticipate that one other precedent will shortly be set ; and that ultimately, even N<pv Zealand will come to realise the folly of society being punished by maintaining its criminals in profitless idleness.”