FOR WOMEN PRISONERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 April 1939, Page 8

FOR WOMEN PRISONERS

SEMI-DETACHED HOUSES. LONDON, March 9. The latest? of Sir Samuel Hoare's prison reforms is the provision of semidetached houses for women prisoners. They are to he built on a new 150-acre site at Stanwell, Middlesex, and they will house women from Holloway Prison and girls from Aylesbury Borstal Institution. Men prisoners from Pentonville will move to Holloway when the women have gone, and Pentonville will be pulled down. Sir Samuel told the House of Commons this week that the new buildings at Stanwell are to look as little like the old type of prison as possible. It was proposed, he said, to enclose the site, not by a high wall, but by a. sunken wall projecting some four feet above the ground level. Considerable use would be made of screens of trees, hedges, and plantations, to avoid the grim appearance of the early nineteenth century prisons. In the part of the site to be devoted to adult women prisoners, there would be semi-detached houses, each containing 25 women and each having its own matron and kitchen equipment. For central use there would be a chapel, a medical unit, workrooms, and educational facilities. There would also be gardens and farming on a small scale. The total accommodation would be for 400 to 450 prisoners.

With regard to the Borstal Institution on the site, there would be central accommodation for medical treatment and administration; otherwise it would be on the lines of other Borstal institutions—the system, of small houses in which the girls would be in comparatively small numbers. There would be complete segregation of the girls from the women.'

Each of the institutions would have its own governor and its own staff. Pioneers of prison reform and men and women who have suffered imprisonment for their belief in social progress have welcomed Sir Samuel Hoare's decision. Miss Cicely Craven, secretary of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “Our organisation has been asking for such a prison for many years. The big buildings erected in the past have been a great handicap to reformers. We shall have to wait before we can judge whether a. prison for women and a Borstal institution on the same estate is a good thing.” More than 20 years ago Miss Alison Neillans was sent to Holloway prison for her work in the suffragette movement. She has joined in the praise of Sir Samuel Hoare’s work. “When I went to Holloway, where I spent four months, some of the conditions were horrible,” she said. “They have been improved since then, but I am sure the new prison will have a beneficial effect.”

Miss Cicely McCall, formerly housemistress at Aylesbury Borstal Institution and at Holloway, welcomes the idea of cottage homes, but says: “The women from Holloway should have no contract with the girls from Aylesbury. I think it would be better if they were housed in defferent parts of the country.”