PRISON ISLANDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 151, 29 June 1938, Page 4

PRISON ISLANDS

SOME FAMED SPECKS

A RESCUE EXPEDITION

Fear of banishment to the dreadel Snake Island—though it is unlikely that such extreme punishment will be meted out to them—hangs like a shadow over the Legionnaires of the Iron Guard who have been roundedup in Rumania, writes Captain Franlfi H. Shaw in the "Daily Mail."

This bleak place, some twenty miles off the coast in the Black Sea, is like nearly all island prisons—escape from it is almost impossible, for a few miles of sea form a far more efficient means of immurement than all the stone walls ever built or the iron bars ever forged. Many such islands in remote corners of the Adriatic and Mediterranean have been used for the internment of Italian political prisoners. . The United States made a wise move when it formed Alcatraz Island, off the Californian coast, into a place of detention for long-term offenders against the law. Alcatraz is all prison —a mass of concrete buildings capable of defeating the craftiest wrongdoers and, what is even more important their associates outside. - One of the main advantages of Alcatraz—a disadvantage from the crook's point of view—is the fact that any vessel approaching the island is instantly spotted. Tife facilities for making a landing are few and extremely well guarded. A CONSTANT WATCH. A sinister place Alcatraz, as tight as a bottle in its holding powers, with a , constant watch maintained seawards night and day—an island little troubled by fogs, and so comparatively small that its sheer stolid stoniness breeds in the most sanguine heart a certain fatalistic acceptance of : the law's power. The great Indian Empire banishes its long-sentence prisoners to the Andamans, a group of desolate islands some distance away from the coast in the Bay of Bengal and uncomfortably near the Equator. But in the Andamans the discipline imposed is far less harsh than that common in most island prisons. No matter what his colour —dark, middledark, or'while —every attempt is made by humane methods to restore the prisoner to society as a useful citizen. _ It is the sense of hopeless immurement that makes island imprisonment so effective. Anyone who has beea isolated on a small -stretch of watersurrounded land, as I have been, well knows the dreary completeness of that isolation, with no sounds from the | outer world to indicate the movement of events. Siberian exile is even preferable to insular detention. • The sight of con-stantly-moving patrols on an otherwise deserted sea brings home the fact of incarceration at every seaward stare—and there is nothing much else to look at but the sea! I have known of many offenders driven mad by this sheer relentlessness of island imprisonment. ON DEVIL'S ISLAND. The French penal settlement of Devil's Island is a case in point: crooks ■in their efforts to escape will risk horrible death by thirst, drowning, sharks, or barracoijtas. But the conditions existent on Devil's Island are a'commonplace today; and, as the guards suffer too from the dreary apathv engendered by the surroundings, it may be that the rules of life there are not so strict and heartless as fiction writers sometimes try to make out, for if the crook suffers, so does the guard. One of the lesser-known, but more drastic, island penal colonies is Fernando Noronha, off the Brazilian coast; a place of detention for Brazilian prisoners of all orders —political as well as criminal, I was once associated with an ola shipmate in an expedition to rescue a notorious malefactor from the island. We were approached by a syndicate to attempt the release of one Senhor Paqueria, of whom we knew nothing t except that he was "a victim of ui> .fortunate circumstances." SPEEDBOAT ESCAPE, A considerable sum was promised in return for our services, so he hired a speedboat, shipped it aboard a tramp steamer whose captain was willing to abet, and were launched into the South Atlantic one night not far fiom the island—the parent steamer making no call there. We headed for the shore, laid up in a stony creek, covering the boat witlx canvas to hid? it, and got busy. The syndicate had done such bribery as was necessary so far as the guards were concerned, and we Collected our man with only a few hazards. There was, of course, a hue and cry, but we were able to lie hidden until such time as our parent freighter was due to return north. • We set off, but during the comfortless cruise—a good deal of the tail-end of a hurricane annoyed us—our prisoner revealed himself to be such a dyed-in-the-wool crook, so soulless and revoltingly vile, that my shipmate became infuriated. We went into conference and decided that we should be doing civilisation a better turn by returning him to ...the island, which we did—much against his wish.

Actually, we had to knock him out before heaving 'nim ashore and streaking away into blue! That experience convinced me that an island pvisan is ton time? more implacable than any p. : ?utal colony ever eroded on a mainlsrs.