Hard Core In Prisons From Underprivileged

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30845, 2 September 1965, Page 10

Hard Core In Prisons From Underprivileged

“The Press” Special Service

WELLINGTON, September 1.

The vast majority of the hard core of prison inmates came from the underprivileged class of New Zealand’s so-called classless society, the senior chaplain attached to prisons (the Rev. E. S. Hoddinott) told the Alligators’ Club this week.

They came almost always from broken or unsatisfactory homes, he said. They had the legal minimum of education, or had only limited education or opportunity for education. Almost invariably this hardened offender was in a dead-end job, said the chaplain. A community got the prisons it deserved. A prison was in fact the ultimate reflection of a society. There was need for the church and for the community -to concern itself with the group of people from whom these offenders sprang. It took £BOO a year to keep one man in prison. “I have often thought i‘ ould be better to send. th<...« to Eton or Harrow for the year,” he said. “It wouldn’t be so expensive.”

PLACE IN FAMILY Prison was a deterrent against crime for the majority of the population who would get there only under the spur of sudden temptation or through misdemeanours while under the influence of liquor, said Mr Hoddinott.

But the hard core he was speaking of belonged to another class, to whom prison was not merely not a disgrace, it was an institution which ran in the family.

“We have fellows who are the third generation of their family to go to prison,” said Mr Hoddinott. Some had had grandfather, father and mother, and all their own generation of brothers and sisters in prison. “They are not going to fear the social disgrace of going to prison if their father and their grandfather did it,” he said. Some considered Christianity a state removed from life. Yet the basic principles applied most strongly in such tough realities as prison life.

These hardened offenders had lost faith in God, if they had ever possessed it. They had lost faith in themselves, and' in their fellow man. Yet without faith they could not take their proper place as socially responsible members of a normally law-abiding community. LITTLE CHANCE

For these hardened offenders there was little chance by the time they reached prison, said Mr Hoddinott. There was need for another service, starting in the schools, to catch these offenders before they emerged as permanent misfits in the world. “The type is starting to emerge in primary school, and the tendencies are very clear in secondary school," he said. “Something should be done in the way of counsellors, not only to deal with them, but to deal also with their home environment.”

Up till the last few years New Zealand prisons were well behind those of the more advanced countries and lagging far astern of the country’s reputation for social advance and experiment. However in the last few years there had been considerable developments. Today in many respects New Zealand prisons were not far behind the enlighten“d institutions of Sweden, Denmark and some parts of the United States, such as California.

Imprisonment in itself was the real punishment. Those who thought prison today was like a five-star hotel had obviously very unhappy experiences in five-star hotels, he said. Prisoners were deprived of liberty. Very few prisoners liked it, and, these were the very small minority who could not cope with the tensions and demands of the outside world. Prison life was monotonous. The food, though menus might look good, was about boarding house standard. Prisoners had to be obedient. They had to do everything they were told. They were subject to a long list of. regulations to which they must submit. BIG ADVANCE

There was also the loss of normal life in their singlesex world. A major breakthrough in getting some hardened anti-social first offenders to see the error of their ways had been gained by the home leave week-end after four months in a six-month sentence.

“This is one of the few things the Justice Department has ever received any commendation about from prisoners and their wives,” said Mr Hoddinott. Letters from prisoners and wives had told the department of marital ties and breaking marriages strengthened and re-forged by this one week-end leave. “They come back from week-end leave saying for the first time, ‘Lets have a look at me and the situation I'm in,’ ” he said.

Punishment also lay in the loss of ability to make decisions for themselves. After years of doing what he was told, of having to make practically no decisions for himself, a man lost the ability to make decisions. IN DISGRACE For the sensitive wrongdoer who might have erred from sudden temptation or through liquor, the major punishment lay in disgrace. He felt rejected by the community, a failure under judgment.

One-third of New Zealand’s 1800 prisoners were under 21 and in Borstal. Here there was occupational training, and specialised rehabilitation teams, psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors and counselling chaplains. In spite of their efforts, the failure rate, the re-admission rate, was high. Sixty per cent of these people would offend again within a few years. The crowded prisons of New Zealand were the result of a larger over-all population, not of an increase in the crime rate, said Mr Hoddinott.