The Prison System

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29193, 2 May 1960, Page 10

The Prison System

The news of extensive building at Paparua Prison is welcome; recent events at Auckland Prison and Invercargill Borstal have again drawn attention to the grave lack of accommodation from which New Zealand’s penal system suffers. Until the prison administration has more accommodation at its disposal, a coherent, progressive penal policy can be no more than a distant aim. The immediate problem of overcrowding has overshadowed all the work of the prisons administration in recent years. The chief contributing factor is a sad increase in criminal offences by younger persons. There has been a 400 per cent, increase since 1950 of receptions into borstal institutions of male offenders aged 15 to 20, and an increase of 123 per cent in the last four years. The prisons administration has kept up with its immediate problems only by the doubtful expedients of overcrowding existing establishments, reviving old institutions such as the Addington women’s prison and the former military gaol at Rolleston, and changing the functions of establishments. The last has had most damaging effects upon the development of a penal policy since the virtual abandonment of the national prison centre at Waikeria as a corrective training centre unbalanced the original plan. A

need for more borstal accommodation has quite changed the character of Waikeria in the last few years. In 1955 its population was 66 per cent. “ reformatory” and 34 per cent, borstal; in 1958 it was 77 per cent, borstal and 23 per cent. “ reformatory ”, and last year the percentages were 92 borstal and 8 “reformatory”. With Waikeria virtually a borstal institution, a plan to make corrective training meaningful and constructive under reasonable security conditions had to be revised. Another penal problem is the high proportion of prisoners whose record or attitude calls for detention in maximum security, and obviously it is maximum security accommodation that takes longest to build. It seems that Paparua Prison, which was to retain its present status as a medium security prison, is now to be a composite prison providing among its 300 inmates for 140 prisoners held in maximinn security conditions. When complete, the new Paparua Prison will provide far better segregation of categories of prisoners than we have ever had in New Zealand, according to the Secretary of Justice, Mr S. T. Barnett As such, its development is to be doubly welcomed, for it should make an important contribution to a penal policy based on humanitarian, sociological, and economic considerations.