WAGES FOR PRISONERS

Evening Star, Issue 25037, 2 December 1943, Page 4

WAGES FOR PRISONERS

" REGIME OF FEAR DEGRADING "

ADDRESS TO HOWARD LEAGUE A plea for the payment of normal wages to prisoners and for the sale of their products on tho community markets was made by Mr John A. Brailsford, 8.A., in an address to the Dunedin branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform last night. Under the present regime of virtual slavery, he said, there was hardly any appeal to social motives. Under the compulsion of fear the prisoner was inevitably and progressively unfitted for community life. If instead we had wages and rewards for specially good worlk the convict's personality could be developed, with his regard for what he could do for his dependents and for the community at largo and for bis own future. More opportunities of education should, of course, go along with the wage earning. Under such a system locks and bolts could be largely replaced with a parole system. People of exceptional character with a real interest in the rehabilitation of the law breakers would be encouraged to enter the service and would help to find the way to further portant, too, that the prisoners should have their social impulses fostered in other ways; for instance, by fellowship in common rooms. And they should have the opportunity of spending a portion of their earnings at a gaol canteen or by .mail order. Under the present system, being denied all opportunities of spending for perhaps a number of years, they tended to lose a sense of the value of money and so to act foolishly when released. The present system was not only damaging to the character of the prisoners, but was unnecessarily costly, said Mr Brailsford. Slave labour was never economic. If the men imprisoned were encouraged to do useful work for reasonable reward and to co-operate with their fellows for the best results, much of tho cost of oversight and locking up could be saved and the goods produced could bring a fair return. It was only natural that at present the labour unions should stand against the selling of the products of prison labour on the open market. Far more than the payment of wages was necessary before our treatment of lawbreakers and our measures for the prevention of crime could be considered Christian or even civilised, but the ending of prison slavery would open the way to progress The address was given under the title. ' Does Reformative Detention Reform? ' .Mr (Brailsford said - that, with all the modern improvements, prison was still essentially demoralising. He believed that was the opinion of many respected political persons who had seen its actual workings. He quoted a chaplain, a penologist, and a gaoler in the same sense. Not only the deprivation of the opportunity to earn a reasonable, wage by community service, but the treadmill character of some of the work required, the long periods of solitude in the cell (and in cases of breach of discipline the still longer periods in the " dummy "), the spying and deceit, and above all the constant regime of fear tended to unfit the victim for community life. A gaol chaplain in England had said, " The man who fits prison, best fits society worst." The so-called " reformative detention " system was even more degrading than the old " hard labour." For it added an additional dread to the regime of fear—the dread of the displeasure of the gaoler and his suhordinates, a displeasure which might mean a difference of a year or two years or more in the term actually, served. Prisoners regarded the rewards of enrly release granted by the board as rewards for toadying and cringing. It was inevitable that the board should be guided mainly by the reports of the gaolers and that the gaolers should judge a man by his docility. This meant that' the gaoler had a terrific axe to hold over the heads of his wards. The pretence that the men were judged according to the measure of their " reforming ' or their fitness for society was a tragic farce. But it was useless to look for scapegoats; useless to blama the prison officers, doing what they could in a difficult and thankless task, or to blame the Prisons' Board. The system must be changed, and for a beginning he believed it was most necessary that prison slavery should be ended. Mr Brailsford said he was not, of course, committing the Howard League to his opinions. He reviewed the obiects of the league, and urged his hearers to join its membership.