THE GAOL RETURNS.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2702, 5 December 1882, Page 2

THE GAOL RETURNS.

The state of matters revealed by the Gaol Returns with regard to prison punishments, will indeed, as our correspondent in Wellington.says, canse considerable surprise. In fact it is almost incredible that what has of late taken place in the Dunedin gaol should have been allowed to run on as long as it has done. The late gaoler there may Lave been a very experienced officer, and the good people ef Dunedin may be very fund of him, as evidenced by the late public meeting got up to protest against his removal, but common sense must stop in and, pointing to the gaol returns, ask what they mean. One man, who was sent to gaol for fourteen days, was kept in eight months and thirteen days. Another man who was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment was detained fifteen months and sixteen days. Another was sentenced to six months, and was detained for two years all but five days. And so in a number of cases. These unfortunates were so very insubordinate in prison that their original sentences were doubled, trebled and quadrupled. The amount of power that is evidently left in the hands of a gaoler is something terrible to contemplate, unless the visiting justices are uncommonly wary. In the case of a prisoner falling out with a gaoler, the latter has the game quite in his own hands. These Dunedin prisoners may have been unusually insubordinate, but the free and easy manner in which prison punishment was piled on to them is surprising. We presume it is one of the functions of tho Great Unpaid to be walked round by officials and generally to blander, but an old and experienced Resident Magistrate, snch as Mr. Strode, should surely have been dissatisfied with what was occur* ring, and taken steps accordingly.