PRISON METHODS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 133, 7 June 1937, Page 7

PRISON METHODS.

Changing Features in British System. OLD WAYS DISAPPEARING. British Official Wireless. RUGBY, June 6. When prison conditions in Britain were discussed in the House of Commons the Home Secretary. Sir Samuel Hoare, said the chief problem to-dav was the young offender and the prevention of recidivism. There were two methods which might be advocated. The first method was to make prison discipline so rigid and the conditions so inhuman that they might hope that prisoners, after one experience, would be deterred from running the risk of going back to prison. In actual practice they had found that that method had not succeeded in reducing recidivism. The other method was to attempt to evoke lost self-respect and to build character. Experience along these lines had shown that as prison administration had become more humane the number of habitual criminals had been lower. For some little time the prison administration had tried the experiment of appealing to prisoners' better instincts and, most important of all. of seeking to give them an interest in things that really mattered in the world. They had adopted the principle of giving privileges which had been lost by bad behaviour rather "than holding out an indefinite hope of them as a reward for- good behaviour. So far as the Prison Commissioners and the Home Office could judge, that experiment had succeeded. The Home Secretary also spoke of the need for modernising many prisons which -were antiquated in character, having been built generations ago when ideas, of prison administration were very different.