PRISON REFORM

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 67, 21 March 1939, Page 13

PRISON REFORM

ACTION IN ENGLAND WOMEN'S COLONY Holloway is no longer to be a women's prison, its inmates will live in a new bungalow "colony" in the country. Men from Pentonville Gaol will move into a converted Holloway. Pentonville will be pulled down to make way for an L.C.C. housing estate. That is the Prison Commissioner's new scheme for modernising ■ prison life, states the "Daily Mail/ Negotiations are now being completed for a 250-acres site at Stanwell, Middlesex, which will form a new kind of "corrective camp" rather than prison for 450 women and a . new Borstal for 150 girls from Aylesbury. The "Borstal" * will be run largely on existing lines, but the women's part of the new colony will be a bold experiment in providing more freedom, a more "homelike" atmosphere, and generally more humane treatment. The rural "Holloway" will have a large central building for work, training, and worship. Around it will cluster bright little dwellings, to divide the women into small . communities with the chance of individual development. NO MORE HIGH WALLS. It may be three years before the entire colony is settled, but already such innovations as these are being planned: A sunken wall around the women's section, rising only four feet above the ground, providing a cheerier view of the world than the forbidding high wall of old, but at the same time having a deep pit to make escape equally difficult. Playing fields, gymnasium—and a farm, where women may keep fit. Domestic training. One great problem faces the authorities in planning this new prison life — the shortage of women prison officers. Somehow women find this work a short cut to matrimony. Large numbers have left recently to marry. In addition to filling these vacancies, the commissioners are accepting recruits for the new colony.. They must be between 24 and 30 (up to 35 in some cases), at least sft 3in in their shoes, of good health, character, and education. Their job will be to teach gardening and domestic work, and to educate and "mother" the women generally.