"TO THOSE CONTEMPLATING ESCAPE"

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 102, 4 May 1929, Page 11

"TO THOSE CONTEMPLATING ESCAPE"

(To the Editor.) Sir,—lt; liuver pays to escape, from prison; those who have "been inside" know it best. Assuming the adventure is successful, the escapee is outlawed for life. For liim, home life ami friends are of the past, and success attained in another country is marred by virtue of the very fact that illegality lias been added lo illegality. I lie notice in the "Gazette" was not necessary to bring that fact home—l presume that was the way it appealed to your reporter s mind when he read the announcement. Apart from the fact that the new regulation includes one "who has been released on probation and rearicslcd and returned to prisou cither for a breach of his probationary license or for a further ofiencc. . . ." are persons on entering prison 'on probation" for a period ot three months lliis period may at present be extended by the prison ■ superintendent .it he considers it desirable, either in the interests ot prison discipline or the prisoner to do so. Ihe "probationary period" referred to, merely alVcets. privileges; that is lights out at 8 p.m., ami "pay marks" alter the hrst three months. The further passage referring to ". . . th e value of any article of departmental property, willully damaged, destroyed, or lost, through carelessness on the part of any prisoner may. be deducted from the accumulated earnings ot such prisoner," i s simply 1 take it, to avoid the bringing up of a pris oner before a Justice and oliaveinc him with the loss of the article. He if sflemn nrt clp '110,I 10,™ 101111' ot' «Pl^ing the lost article I know from bitter experience that it cost the Department the expenses of bringing Mr. Snlek from Wellington to Mount Crawford to recover 4'/ 2 d! Appai° ent y, then, the present regulations are too costly to enforce So that without trial by an outside tribunal a prisoner may be mulcted in damages for something to which his: negligence may only have been contri-

f^feh^i^—^i^' he was out all day working in,i ■« 1 ■ compulsory to Icav S c ',, I e , 'j^T .•ells, should this have bee done' Thn Department might have acWledi d t"n duty it is to clean up each Xi g" fc also state that this 2 S 6d is given on] to men who arc going out into the worM de^rn'riir^-^-^om .V£Rli. SAP,