The Press MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1968. The Long Road To Paremoremo

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31863, 16 December 1968, Page 16

The Press MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1968. The Long Road To Paremoremo

Critics of the new Auckland prison at Paremoremo seem so determined to focus attention on particular features of the prison that they lose sight of the penal system of which it is but a small part The Rev. G. L. Sweet, a former prison chaplain, has called the prison a “merciless monster”. Dr I. F. ’McDonald, a lecturer in criminology at Auckland University, wants a “ positive environment ” for prisoners who must be secluded from the rest of society: and he sees the prison as something based only on a desire for revenge and punishment. Other persons describing the prison’s interior and appointments have been so impressed by the “ inhuman gimmickry ” of the technical and physical arrangements that they have spared little thought for the people who run the prison or for the influence on prisoners of their methods, personalities, and knowledge. Mr C. H. Rolph, a knowledgeable writer on crime, criminals, and penology, drew attention to the importance of the management of a prison when he found this to be the redeeming feature of the Dunedin women’s prison, an institution he described as deplorable. In the Auckland prison, on the other hand, he found a “ perfect illustration of how much freedom and “ open training there can be inside a really secure “prison perimeter—the best I have seen anywhere “in the world ”,

Perhaps the Department of Justice has laid too much emphasis on the security features of the prison. In spite of riots, escapes, and public demand for greater security, this prison is almost certainly too large for the present number of prisoners who, for the community’s safety and for the proper running of other prisons, must be strictly isolated from the rest of society and, at times, from each other. If the Secretary for Justice, Dr J. L. Robson, has the success he expects—and deserves—from the other forms of detention, training, and treatment that are now being instituted as rapidly as funds permit, the Auckland Prison may always be too large. But even Dr Robson acknowledges that for every success with more enlightened treatment there is a failure: and the steadv growth of the population in all kinds of penal institutions suggests that the number of failures—even if penal sendees are dramatically improved—will soon justify the size of Paremoremo. Until then the orison will probably hold men who would be in medium-security quarters if enough accommodation of the kind were available elsewhere. Arrangements at Paremoremo for classifying and segregating prisoners are adequate for the temporary use of the prison for medium-security prisoners. In due course a medium-security prison will probably be built at Paremoremo. By concentrating staff in the Auckland prison the department will employ scarce skills and knowledge to the best advantage. Otherwise it might have been better to build two small maximum-security prisons, one a maximumsecuritv extension to the Panarua prison. Unless a man shows clearly upon conviction that he is a danger to the community he will not enter the more rigorous sections of the Auckland prison until he has graduated through many levels of the penal system: through periods of probation, perhaps through Borstal or detention centres, and through near-open prisons. Even then he will not be placed in the stricter confines and greater isolation of the high-security block unless he has shown himself to be hostile or a serious menace to order within the prison. On one score the prison is a distinct improvement on any other in the country: it will not be overcrowded. The nature of the accommodation precludes the overcrowding that is one of the evils of older institutions. The rest of the prison system is imperfect: so is the knowledge of even the most enlightened reformers. The penal system fails at least as often as it succeeds in its efforts to correct or cure more serious offenders. The lack of knowledge and of staff to increase the expectation of successes would not have excused ignoring the failures and would not have obviated the need to build a prison to deal as surely as the department can with dangerous, persistent, or recalcitrant offenders.