Widespread Prison Reform Predicted

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31077, 4 June 1966, Page 17

Widespread Prison Reform Predicted

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, June 3.

Within 10 years, Britain’s prisoners will earn the proper rate for a worth-while job, working an agreed 40-hour week, and helping to support their families.

This is the forecast of Lord Stonham, the Under-Secre-tary for Home Affairs, who is in charge of prison administration.

They will also help to meet the bill of £22 million that the Prison Service now costs annually. Lord Stonham does not exclude the possibility of prisoners making some restitution to their victims from their workshop earnings. Much of this is to be achieved by a complete overhaul of the prison industries, by encouraging private firms to install plant in prisons and by using outside consultants to advise on market research, management, accounting, and work study. Lord Stonham says that with the experts’ advice and the prison administration’s own enthusiasm, “we intend to burst from our dim legacy of 19th-century conditions into a 20th-century concept of enlightened industrial prison policy.” This will bring hope, dignity and confidence to prisoners, and sociaT and material profit to the community, he says.

The little uneconomic prison industries will go. No more basketmaking, matmaking, and tagmaking, instead, prisoners will train in light engineering, textiles,

metal recovery, wood and tubular steel work, and furniture.

Today’s average wage of 5s 9d a week may rise to £l4.