BORSTAL SYSTEM.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19804, 17 December 1929, Page 15

BORSTAL SYSTEM.

STATEMENT BY PROBATION OFFICER. "AFTER CARE" TREATMENT. Early iu the controversy centring in the Borstal Institution Mr YV\ U. Darby, Probation Officer for Christchurch, was invited to comment on a letter that had appeared in The Press. This lie declined to <lo, but yesterday he reconsidered his decision, and made a statement. "At first 1 refrained from unking any comment," Mr Darby said, "because I thought that it was for officers higher up, but as local condition* have been attacked —the discipline exercised by the Probation Officer, for instance — I thought that it was time that the public knew the facts." Mr Darby then explained, that under the Borstal Institutions Act, the Prisons Boaiid had power to apply a year's "after care" treatment, and that was not probation. That extra after-eaTe treatment is to help the boy over the period of unemployment with wlfieh he might be faced, and to help him in other ways. There was no power to return him to the Borstal Institutions during the "after care" treatment unless he broke the law again. One correspondent, Mr Darby added, was evidently confusing the Borstal boy's license with that of an habitual criminal, who could be arrested at any time, and returned to prison. A Borstal boy could not be treated that way. Some boys were released on license, but as iar as he knew, of the dozens of boys who came out on license in the past year he had found it necessary to suggest the return of only one boy, and that was for open defiance of every known social law. He had absolutely refused obedience of any kind, and all the Probation Officer could do was to write to Wellington, and suggest that lie be returned. He had not power to return the Upy himself. In the three years during' which Mr Darby had been here, he had not. he said, had to recommend the return of more than two or three. To say that a lad could be returned to the Borstal Institution for no reason was straining the point. The license said that he could be • returned for disobeying instructions, but there was nothing to say he could be returned for obeying them. "We have little or 110 trouble from the boys from the Borstal," Mr Darby concluded, "and I have never had any complaints from the boys selves. They all say that they have had the, best of treatment. To say that they no moral instruction and character training is absolutely wrong. The boys have told me frequently lhat if it's in a fellow when he goes to the Borstal thev will make a man of him.''