A Thankless Task

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 61, 7 December 1943, Page 4

A Thankless Task

Si,- Jailers and warders have a difficult’task and get little thanks. People like myself who condemn the prison system should make it clear that we are not looking for scapegoats. I am particularly concerned to state my position because of the publication in your paper and others of the Press Association messaspe from Dunedin summarizing my talk to the Howard League for Penal Reform. This was an accurate and good summary as far as it went, but I was sorry it omitted my appeal to the public not to make scapegoats of the jail officers or anyone else. As long as society (through Governments) maintains a penal system based on compulsion and the appeal to fear, is it not inevitable that the jail authorities will provide and use weapons to make that compulsion effective? Flogging used to be inflicted for breaches of prison discipline; now wc have the refined torture of solitary confinement plus the arbitrary power of the jailers to get the period of the indeterminate imprisonment varied by months or years by means of a good or bad report to the Prisons Board. If these cruel and unjust weapons were taken away and the regime of fear and compulsion still maintained, I believe it is inevitable that some other weapons, possibly worse, would be found. Only insofar as we find ways of appealing to social motives and impulses and of educating lawbreakers (specially ihe young ones) to respond to such appeals can we have any real reform. Reasonable opportunities of association in leisure time, as well as at work, ample opportunities of communication witli relatives and friends, and extension and improvement of parole s>ys-

terns are important, but I am inclined to think that the most important step is to encourage the lawbreaker in commtini'v service and to pay him for Ins work’at normal rates. Incidentally, when that, conies about, the efforts of those who devote themselves to the rehabilitation of lawbreakers (recognizing that the “bruised reed” is not to be broken) are iikelv to lie duly honoured. —1 am, etc., JOHN A. BRA.IESFORD. December 6.