PRISON REFORM

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 November 1930, Page 5

PRISON REFORM

NEW SYSTEM’S SUCCESS [PEE PBESS ASSOCIATION.] WELLINGTON, November 14. Prison development in New Zealand was traced by the Controller-General of Prisons, Mr. B. L. Dallard, in an address, last evening, before the Wellington Branch of .the Howard League for Prison Reform, after which he referred to the present day treatment. He said that the idea underlying the right to remove an offender from the

midst of Society, had given place to a realisation that although society might be protected whilst the offender was in prison, he was a greater menace than ever before if he emerged worse than when he entered, craftier than ever,, and embittered by the experience, or if he was hardened by his treatment in prison, rather than socialised in his attitude. Classification of offenders was now recognised as an important fundamental, and the general trend was for a decrease in the prison population. The number committed to prison last year was fifty

per cent, less per hundred thousand general population than it had been twenty-five years ago. The drop since the immediate pre-war years had been from thirty-one per cent, per hundred thousand to seventeen point five per cent, per hundred thousand last year. I Greater attention was now being given Ito the question of after-care, and the i Department had associated with its probation officers voluntary committeemen to the extent of several hundred throughout the country, who assisted those who had made a slip to re-estab-lish themselves as useful units of society.