PENAL REFORM

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 149, 23 March 1928, Page 7

PENAL REFORM

ADDRESS TO HOWARD LEAGUE. A meeting of the Wellington branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform was held on Wednesday evening. Mr. A. W. Free, LL.B., delivered a lecture on “The Present Penal System of New Zealand.;’ The most striking feature of the svs’tem, he said, was that the powers of the Courts over persons sentenced to any form of detention were equalled by that of the Controller-Gen-eral of Prisons and the Prisons Board. A Judge or Magistrate might impose a sentence of confinement in a Borstal Institution, but by the act of the Con-troller-General, with the consent of the Minister of Justice, the delinquent might be moved to an ordinary prison and there set to hard labour. On the other hand, a person sentenced to .a long term of hard labour might with the consent of the Minister be released by the Prisons Board in the early days of his sentence.Dlr. Free dealt in turn with the various forms of punishment which the Courts may inflict, other than fines, namely: Imprisonment with hard labour ; simple imprisonment; reformative detention; committal to a Borstal institution; committal to a- private reformntoHrv institution ; committal to an inebriates institution ; committal (of children) to institutions under the Child Welfare Act, 1925, formerly known as industrial schools; and release on probation. The Child Welfare Act and the Prevention of Crime (Borstal Institutions Establishment) Act, 1921. were considered. and their operation contrasted with that of the Prisons Act and Regulations, and the institutions and machinery established for effecting the purposes of the various forms of punishment and reformative treatment were discussed in detail.