Returning To Gaol

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31364, 9 May 1967, Page 15

Returning To Gaol

The fact that more than 75 per cent of those who went to gaol would go back again and again was the sign of a colossal failure of the community, the Rev. Dr. D. O. Williams, principal of the Methodist Trinity College, Auckland, and director of the Auckland inter-church counselling service, said in Christchurch on Sunday. The uncontrolled explosive emotions of adults which landed them in court were the emotions of infants, he said. Many of the problems which caused a life-long distortion of the world arose from experiences in the earliest years of life. The regular return of many offenders to prison had resulted in prison psychologists and chaplains saying “concentrate on first offenders and let the others go,” he said.

Speaking at a seminar on personal counselling. Dr. Williams gave an example of the result of telephone ministry. A man newly released from prison and feeling confused telephoned from a box in the middle of Auckland, and before he had finished speaking to the telephone counsellor a specially trained minister had arrived at the man’s side to offer personal help. Dr. Williams said that all newly released prisoners suffered from “gate fever.” In some cases they deliberately committed a minor crime, so that they would be put back in gaol where they felt safe.