PRISON REFORM

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 88, 14 April 1945, Page 4

PRISON REFORM

I think it is time some fairminded citizen took up the. cudgels on behalf of those men , who persons in the class of your correspondent, Arthur O'Halloran,. see-fit to belittle. Very , graciously Arthur O'Halloran has offered ' to excuse these men—but. to excuse them for what? Is he going to excuse them for guarding, the worst type of criminal New Zealand can produce' and safeguarding personal and public property? Is he going to excuse them for working under the worst conditions possible in New Zealand? Where else is a man expected to stand guard for eight hours a day, six days a week,- fifty weeks a year, in all weathers and wearing the same uniform, winter and summer alike? Is he aware that inmates under the supervision of these men have all been proven criminals, put away for the protection of him and his kind? Doesn't he recall the occasion of a gaol break when one warder was beaten almost to death and two others seriously injured? Doesn't he realise that in the interests of public safety these men incessantly have their lives at stake? FAIR'S FAIR.

A vast section of public opinion is to-day convinced our prisons and system of indiscriminate punishment for all offenders (hard labour) is simply out of date. The O'Brien case alone has revolted many with the implied punishment of breaking a man who resists gaol discipline. The case of the defaulter hunger strikers cuts across all our sense of humanity also. These men are classed as .rebels against what?—cruel conditions. Surely modernisation of our prisons and punishments is long overdue. Mr. Mason should re-read his pre Ministerial statements about our prison system—he might blush, perhaps. Depriving a man of his liberty is a big punishment. Surelv for small breaches of harsh conditions we need not rely on physical torture or breaking a man both mentally and physically. In any case modern thought does not condone physical tortures as punishments and what else is solitary confinement and bread and water, et.;. 1945, NOT 1845.