WOMEN IN PRISON—I Out Of Way In Dunedin’s Cramped And Gloomy Gaol

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31864, 17 December 1968, Page 2

WOMEN IN PRISON—I Out Of Way In Dunedin’s Cramped And Gloomy Gaol

(Specially written for “The Press” by TUI THOMAS) No dog-lover would regard the exercise yard at the Dunedin Women’s Prison enough space for one lively spaniel.

The two strips of asphalt—one about 40ft by 10ft, the other about 40ft by 20ft —make up the total outside area the 26 inmates can reasonably expect to see during their terms of sentence, unless on outings' privilege. Two of them are in for “life.”

The sun beats down into the wider piece of yard for part of a fine day. The narrower strip, in the shadow of two walls, looks permanently damp.

An acrid smell of smoke often drifts over from the Dunedin Railway Station, straight across the road from the prison building on Highway No. 1. A few plants grow reluctantly in tubs along the sunniest side of the yard, to remind prisoners of the seasons outside. From a clothesline bits of shabby washing hang, as they do behind the brownstone tenements of New York slums.

In this miserable yard there could have been a basketball court for younger women and a garden plot or two for older women to plant flowers and watch them grow. But a block of sewing rooms was built in the middle of the quadrangle because there was nowhere else to put it AH In Together Looking down on the drab stone well is a sparsely furnished, glassed-in gallery. In this, the only sitting room for prisoners, impressionable first-offenders spend their leisure time with well-prac-tised criminals: girls of 19 with women in their fif ties, in for a variety of crimes from theft to murder. If she prefers her own company, a woman can only go to her tiny bedroom-cell, where it is always chilly except in summer. There is a library with enough books to keep an avid reader satisfied for about a year and other reading matter is available through the Country Library Service. Prisoners are allowed to watch television until 9 p.m. or a little later, and on some week-end afternoons. They are encouraged to study and several are doing correspondence courses for School Certificate. Teachers from the Kaikorai Valley High School hold classes for them several evenings a week. Outside groups bring in entertainment parties frequently; women from the Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Society visit the inmates every week. Two part-time chaplains and a marriage guidance officer attend the prison regularly. “Trusties” are taken out occasionally to church and to play softball or basketball. Encaged But none of these services can make up for the inhuman lack of open space, which New Zealanders count as their birthright. “God’s Own Country” has

encaged its women criminals for nearly 10 years in this archiac, dismal prison, built as the Dunedin Gaol with 53 cells for men and 20 for women in 1896, to hold them captive, out of the way. A particularly sensitive person, in for a life sentence, could hardly be expected to retain her sanity without specialised help in this institution—the only long-term prison for women in New Zealand. Society is entitled to protection from criminals. But locking up a group of antisocial women together gives only a temporary measure of security to the community. The prison environment is more likely to breed hate, bitterness and a desire for revenge than to promote any wish to reform. Cover-Up The brick and stone building, which houses the women’s prison, is shared with the Dunedin Police station (across the frontage) and its nest of lock-up cells for male offenders. Recent coats of pastelcoloured paint have brightened the interior of the women’s prison, but they have done little more for the place than heavy layers of cake make-up do for an acci-dent-scarred face. The bedrooms are homely enough as cells go, with gay curtains and bed covers. But for many a newcomer, locked in for the night with her enamel chamber pot, her cell must seem like the inside of a coffin. The corridor to the shower rooms and toilets is still open to the wind and the rain. The dim stone stairway down to this area is still hazardous for a woman heavy with child. The depressing grey and the eerie silence of the punishment cell block still brings a shudder of apprehension. Women are behind those closed doors, left in solitude to ponder on their violence and their frustrations. Downstairs from this bleak gallery the sounds and smells of ordinary living come as a relief—the clatter of saucepans and aroma of roasting meat from a spotless kitchen; the hiss of steam and the fragrance of freshly ironed clothing in the white laundry. Teo Much Time Time passes quickly enough on daily prison chores. It is the dreary, leftover time, when hands are idle and minds stagnate, that brings a chain reaction of problems. Tensions build up and eventually explode, one way or another. Violence can be expected as an outlet for frustrations and magnified irritations.

Some degree of homosexuality is inevitable among women who have been living promiscuously and are suddenly cut off from normal physical relationships and affection. "If this building was set in three acres of land it would be more tolerable,” the Superintendent (Miss L. M, Stowell) said recently. “It is the complete lack of space for recreational facilities that poses the problems. There is just not enought for the women to do. But I cannot ask them to turn round and scrub a floor all over again, for instance, merely to keep them busy. That would be inhuman.” At her urging the Justice Department has recently

allowed more outings where there is no security risk to the community. In the six months she has been In charge, Miss Stowell has, with the support of her dedicated staff, let light and overdue fresh air into the place. She has opened windows and doors when it is not necessary to keep them locked. She has had paint screens scraped of cell windows to give prisoners a glimpse of the outside world. She has encouraged the women to take a pride in their appearance, wear their own clothes for special occasions and to give each other hair sets. “Miss Stowell is a gift from Heaven to us,” one of the long-term inmates told me. And to this prisoner, the recent announcement that tenders for a new women’s prison would be called early nevt year must have sounded like the promise of a commuted sentence.