Some Radical Proposals For Prison Reform

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 99, 28 April 1945, Page 4

Some Radical Proposals For Prison Reform

By REV. CANON C. W. CHANDLER COLLOWING upon my recent comments on prison conditions and the need for radical reform, it might be well to propose such reforms as I deem to be thoroughly reasonable from a Christian point of view. But first of all let us look at the word "crime" itself and endeavour to define what is meant by the term and arrive, if possible, at a reasonably scientific viewpoint with regard to it. My dictionary defines it as "an act which is an offence against human law," or, alternatively, as "a foolish, ill-judged, useless action." Hence the common use of the phrase "it would be a crime" to do this or that. I incline to the belief that many criminal acts can be termed foolish, ill-judged and useless actions, and that with a better and more educated sense of civic responsibility many foolish first offenders would never have given offence and would thus have been saved from lives of crime which so often follow upon a first imprisonment.

Due allowance must also be made for the existence of criminal types. There is a definite biological factor that has to be taken into account when dealing with many criminals. Furthermore, the human law which criminals break is a variable quantity. Havelock Ellis observes that "we regard it to-day as a great crime to kill our fathers or children—but even the most civilised European nation regards it as rather glorious to kill the fathers and children of others in war." Pray God this may not always be so.

The Property Sense A being who has little or no "property sense" or who has a distorted view regarding the rights of others to own what he himself lacks, is bound, even in childhood, to have little or no respect for the rights, privileges and possessions of others. Society breeds anti-social types, hence crime is very largely a social responsibility. The dispossessed have a grudge against a society which seems to have denied them from birth many of those educational and social amenities which others enjoy. Our gaols are filled with men of this type.

Now, I would ask, should a man be punished for not having a correct social sense. Should a man be punished because in childhood he was allowed to run the streets and was never encouraged to seek the companionship of those who were better than himself? There was a time when children were punished for not knowing their twice-times table. In those days pedagogues believed in "knocking" some sense into the heads of their pupils. They walked about armed with canes from morning till night. Not so now. Yet we continue to punish anti-social types by dressing them in grotesque garb, and by herding them together in the fetid atmosphere of our insanitary gaols. There must be a better way of dealing with these people. So-called "reformative detention" is only reformative in name, or largely so. They occupy the same cells, walk the same concrete circles and wear the same clothes as the rest of the inmates.

An Educational Proposal Does it sound ridiculous to suggest that every gaol should have large and well-lighted classrooms with qualified full-time, teachers and modern apparatus for the re-education of many of our "anti-socials"? If cleanliness is next to godliness, then could not our gaols provide large airy bathrooms and ample facilities for the sort of "private" cleanliness that most of us enjoy who can perform our ablutions with at least a measure of privacy? Could not a gaol library be a library in the best sense of the word, replete with a Dewey system operated by the prisoners themselves, instead of a poky little room full of dirty little volumes of a nondescript character such as is now the ease in Auckland gaol?

Could anything but good result from the employment of a full-time welfare officer who could take an expert interest in the men's leisure time employment? What a wealth of wholesomeness is embodied in the word "hobby," and how many

youths of to-day would be saved from crime if they knew more about the wise and happy use of their spare time. The adoption of some such proposals as these, even in a modified form, would be productive of more good than many sermons on the awfulness of crime, and the need for being, as so many of us are, just negatively good.

The Gaol Chaplain A gaol chaplain should be resident in the gaol. He should be accessible at all times and his consulting room should provide the acme of comfort for himself as well as for those who seek his help and advice. Most of our larger gaols should have a staff of civilians, ununiformed, and devoted to the godlike task of human reclamation. These are the people who should keep in touch with men after they have been released.

A Minister of Justice with a little vision, a good deal of courage, and something of a social passion could be, if he wished, a veritable pioneer in the scientific treatment of criminals in New Zealand. Such gaols as Auckland would have to be converted to a better use, and really modern buildings would have to be erected outside the cities where such experiments could be made.

Likely as not nothing will come of all our for the ignorance and apathy which have been mainly responsible for the long persistence of our antiquated prison methods will long continue to festoon, like spiders' webs, the antechambers of officialdom. So long as Ministers with portfolios are content to operate worn-out machinery in an effort to be polite to permanent under-secretaries and other ■ civil servants, so long will our penal establishments remain what they are to-day—semi-effete survivals of a former age.