Guidance Needed For Discharged Prisoners

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30277, 1 November 1963, Page 6

Guidance Needed For Discharged Prisoners

(Special Correspondent NJK.P.A.)

SYDNEY, October 31. A man who has spent 23 of his 48 years to gaol told a Sydney judge this week that discharged prisoners should be placed under strict guidance. He said any man who served a tong term of imprisonment should be subjected to control for a period after his release.

The man, Arthur Johnson, was sentenced to another seven years’ gad as a habitual criminal. He pleaded guilty to three charges of breaking into shops and jewellery and stealing jewellery and other goods worth £4200. Johnson was released from gad last March after serving 10 years of a 14-year sentence for assaulting a girl.

In an impassioned statement from the dock, Johnson told Judge Rooney: “I don’t believe I was bom a thief, but I have never had any proper guidance after serving prison terms.

“Since the age of 18 I have not had more than six years of freedom, and I don’t want to be in gaol when I am due for retirement.” Johnson said he spent four yearn and a half in Grtftoo

Gaol. the maximum security prison, and he said it was easier than some of the institutions he was to when a child. Slept in Parks “At the age of nine I was sleeping to parks,” he said. “Whan I come out of gaol next time I want to be forced to report to somebody. To cast a man out into the community after doing 10 years inside is very risky.” Judge Rooney told Johnson he . could have voluntarily sought assistance from such welfare organisations as the Adult Probation Service, the Prisoners’ Aid Society or the Salvation Army.