PRISON DISCIPLINE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 270, 13 November 1943, Page 6

PRISON DISCIPLINE

"UNJUSTIFIED CRITICISM" SIR HUBERT OSTLER'S VIEWS (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Friday "I was both interested and sur prised to read the criticism by Dr. D. G. McMillan of our prisons and borstals," said Sir Hubert Ostler, retired judge of the Supreme Court. He was commenting on a recent address by Dr. McMillan in Dunedin to the Howard League for Penal Reform. ' "I served for IS years as a iudge, and for the last four years of that period as chairman of the Prisons Board," said Sir Hubert. "I do not recall any material changes being effected while Dr. McMillan was Minister in Charge of Prisons. The simple fact is that Dr. McMillan did not, and does not, understand the principles and purpose of the criminal law. Prisons are not intended to be places of comfort and amusement at the public expense, but are for the protection of society. An uninformed and emotional reformer, by the encouragement of a sense of self-pity and undermining of the discipline so necessary to the undisciplined, harms the prospects of reformation as much as a brutal warder. Unhappily, while the latter is extinct, the former " flourishes. The most serious result of misguided interferences in these matters is an inevitable tendency to break down discipline in prisons. "In this regard it is significant that, coincident with, or shortly following, Dr. McMillan's term of office, there occurred the most brutal and criminal assaults on warders in the history of our prisons. When I became chairman of the Prisons Board I was familiar with the criticisms of our prison system made by the P&ward Penal Reform I easus and others. My considered opinion, after seeing the work of the o'ricon system for myself for four years, is" that the criticism is unjustified."