Experts On Wages For Prisoners

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30768, 4 June 1965, Page 8

Experts On Wages For Prisoners

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 3. A panel of nine men has privately passed thumbs-down judgment on a Justice Department proposal that prison inmates be paid award wages for their labours. The panel, which included a bus driver, a farmhand, an

upholsterer, a lawyer, a carpenter and an industrial consultant, considered the proposal from a position of some authority, for all its members are serving terms at Wi Tako prison, Trentham. Recently Sweden has launched such a trial scheme at one of its prisons, and the Minister of Justice (Mr Hanan) has instructed his department to keep in contact with the Swedish prisons administration on the project. The nine-man panel of

'experts at Wi Tako ruled that prisoners are better off las they are. I Although single men would profit financially if paid award rates, married men with children in many cases would be worse off, and the system would introduce so many anomalies that trouble among prisoners would be inevitable they considered. New Zealand’s penal administration appreciates that the wages system would carry a multitude of problems. Its major advantage would be to transfer a prisoner's financial responsibilities from the social security fund to the prisoner himself. From his earnings he would provide for his wife and family and pay his own keep in prison. Some prisoners would be able to save money to aid them in rehabilitation, and others ordered by the court to make restitution would be able to do so during their prison term.

Shouldering these responsibilities themselves would encourage prisoners to beresponsible citizens. If prisoners were paid normal rates, objections to “cheap prison labour” competing with industry would be overcome and the produce of prison workshops could be sold on the open market. Penalogists feel the system would be particularly appropriate in institutions for persons serving their first prison term. It would possibly have little merit where hardened offenders were concerned. The simple experience of working regularly at the one task for wages would benefit many prisoners. Difficulties penologists foresee include inequality of pay among prisoners doing different types of work, the financial advantage single men would have over married men, getting rid of “the artful dodger,” the possibility bf prisoners earning more than junior prison officers, the problem of overtime work and docking pay for time off. The panel of prisoners doubted the benefits of the system. Earning pay “inside” would teach them nothing that earning pay “outside” had not already taught, they felt.

Married men with families would be at considerable dis-

advantage when compared with their present position. One prisoner with a wife and five children estimated he would have to earn £lB a week to maintain his family at the same standard they achieved under social security benefit. Most claimed that nobody was paid, or could live on, award wages today. “I’d be better off financially: I'm divorced and on the same basis as a single man,” said one. He favoured the system, provided it did not mean withdrawal of the working parole scheme whereby prisoners take civilian employment during the final stages of their prison term, returning to prison at the end of the working day. All members of the panel agreed an award pay scheme, if introduced, should be limited to first offenders. It could have no practical use in the rehabilitation of confirmed criminals. Its influence on the most receptive of first offenders

would depend on the individual. The panel appreciated that penal authorities were endeavouring to do something for prisoners, but said paying award wages did not look to be the answer. “1 agree we need something to help people establish themselves and to foster a sense of responsibility,” the lawyer said. “At present there is no responsibility. A prisoner is totally protected—and that is a destroying thing. “I don't think wages will achieve much. Extension of working parole probably would,” he said. Other prisoners agreed that working parole could do something for a man that locking him up away from the world would never do. “The settling in period is the time of punishment," one of the prison gardeners said. “It takes from six weeks to three months to foster laziness. “But a man on working parole is a changed person."