‘Tough’ Warning Sent To Prisons

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31256, 31 December 1966, Page 11

‘Tough’ Warning Sent To Prisons

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, December 30. Britain’s 50 prison governors received a “polite but tough” letter from the Government yesterday telling them to help curb a record flood of escapes from antiquated, under-staffed gaols.

Five more prisoners escaped on Wednesday, bringing this year’s total of flights from custody to

a record 692. Britain, with 54.4 million people, has a prison population of 33,342. The letter to the governors was sent by Sir James Mackay, the new chief of the Home Office Prison Department, after day-long talks with the Home Secretary, Mr Roy Jenkins. Sir James Mackay was ordered to improve security in the gaols by carrying out recommendations proposed by a Government commission headed by Lord Mountbatten. Although details of the letter were not officially announced, reports said it warned of the need to end slackness in prisons and told the governors they would be held responsible for further escapes. Governors’ ‘Duty’ The reports said the letter was “polite but tough” in telling the governors it was their duty to prevent escapes. The latest escapees included two from Kirkham open prison in Lancashire—who were quickly recaptured—and one from the Drake Hall open prison, near Stafford. A man accused of larceny escaped from a hospital in London after telling police he had swallowed a cuff-link. A prisoner serving 16 years in London’s Pentonville Pri-

son for armed robbery and robbery with violence escaped by clambering up a ladder leaning against an inside wall of the gaol. He was recaptured later.

Frenchmen are following British gaol-breaking as keenly as their national soccer league.

“Dartmoor six, Brixton one," a tongue-in-cheek television news announcer said one evening this week, giving the latest escape “score” from two of Britain’s reputed strongholds.

France’s newspapers are giving the escapes headline treatment almost daily.