Prison chaplains angry at Minister

Press, 4 May 1984, Page 5

Prison chaplains angry at Minister

Christchurch prison chaplains are angry over the stand the Minister of Justice, Mr McLay, has taken supporting corrective training.

The city’s eight chaplains have written to Mr McLay criticising his response to an evaluation study made by the Justice Department condemning the programme. The report, released last month, took about two years to compile and described the programme as an “excessively punitive system” that was “largely an act of retribution.”

“In spite of the total condemnation by the study, Mr McLay maintains that there is still a place for corrective training in our justice system,” said a spokesman for the chaplains, Sister Maria O’Connell, yesterday. The chaplains were well qualified to assess the ineffectiveness of the corrective training system and completely agreed with the conclusions made by the researchers of the report, she said.

In the letter the chaplains urged Mr McLay to con-

sider reintroducing the Detention Centre programme which was abolished when corrective training was implemented in 1981. They claim that this programme, with greater community involvement, more education, and more active experiential training, would have greater success in helping young people in society. The chaplains would like to see the programme introduced on a regional basis so that the youth are no longer sent away from their families and communities — the most effective agents of reform as recognised by the Penal Policy Review, Sister O’Connell said. She said that under the present system boys from all over the South Island were sent to the Invercargill Youth Prison, to a programme which made no allowances for emotional or educational needs.

“It is a system which breeds anger and violence,” she said.