PENAL REFORMS

Evening Star, Issue 25032, 26 November 1943, Page 2

PENAL REFORMS

WARM ARGUMENT CONTINUES dr McMillans iurn " 1 am amazed that Sir Hubert should persist in his munoug aDout ' common rooms ' in prisons, mid even more so Dy his grossly misleading statement that ' all prisons have accommodation where prisoners can torogather, said Dr D. G. McMillan last night in a further rejoiner to Sir iaubert Ostler on the suoject of prison rerorm. " The rooms, or rather assembly halls,, are the very antitheses ot what is understood by the term ' common room,'" Dr McMillan said. "The foregathering consists of being marched into the hall, sitting respectfully quiet and still while a lecture, etc., is given, and then being marched back to the cell. Why does Sir Hubert try, so consistently, to mislead the public? He would be just as accurate in saying that each prisoner is provided with a. private sitting room. So lie is if Sir Hubert called the cell a sitting room. It is as much a sitting room as the lecture hall is a ' common room.' INTERVIEW WITH PRISONER. " Sir Hubert will gain little by his personal attack on me. All prisoners have the right to interview _ the Minister when he inspects the prison. I will never forget my first interview. The prisoner was marched in and stood at attention in a small dock"across the room. The superintendent of the prison sat on one side of me, the controller on the other, and the prisoner was told to proceed. " A farce does not appeal to me, so I asked the superintendent and con-, troller to retire, sat the prisoner on a chair by the desk, and listened to his story. .1 don't believe every uncorroborated statement from either side, but I did make the prisoner feel that he was being treated like a human being and free from. the fear or fact of victimisation. Having heard both sides, I unearthed too many truths to suit some people, as Sir Hubert's vehemence will indicate.

" I don't worry much about Sir Hubert's attitude towards the need for penal reform," Dr McMillan said. " He showed his mental attitude towards prisoners only too "well in his first attack on me when, having seen a prisoner referred to as ' Mr 'in a copy of a private letter from myself to a member of Parliament, he betrayed the fact that this burned so bitterly within his soul that it not only remained in his memory for years, but even caused him. at the end of that time, to forget the civil service ethics of sefrecy and use it in a most misleading way in public controversy. * " This faux pas discloses so completely his mental attitude towards prisoners that little else need be said in reply to his various other halftruths. Instead of attacking mc. Sir Hubert might well have used his declining years in advocating the reform and improvement of conditions with which be claims to be so familiar. LACK OF SOCIAL AMENITIES.

" What of the large percentage of adult prisoners (82 per cent, in one group I investigated) who have commenced their records with a term in Borstal? What of the complete absense of fresh fruit from prison diet, the long dreary hours of solitary confinement spent by all prisoners locked alone in their cells from the time work ends until' it begins, sitting alone, eating alone ?_ What of the lack of complete medical examination on committal both in the prisoner's. interests and in that, of his fellows? What of' the complete lack of true social intercourse in prison, of the denial of lavatory facilities to prisoners from lock-up after work until the doors are unlocked after breakfast? What of the heartbreaking conditions controlling visits by wires of prisoners? These and many other conditions mjght have been improved by his advocacy, " But then why should one expect advocacy of reform from one who showed his mental attitude only too well in his bitterness, over mv having referred to a prisoner as 'Mr ' in a letter to a colleague? " Dr McMillan concluded. " This is a mental attitude that no volume of evidence or accumulation of fact could change. That being so. I can see no point in continuing this controversv."