PRISON POPULATION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 17 December 1925, Page 5

PRISON POPULATION.

GAOL CAPACITY, NOT FILLED. (Special to The Star.) WELLINGTON, Dee. 16. fifteen prisons and State reformatories in the Dominion have accommodation for 1470 inmates, but the Government Statistician gives the satisfactory assurance in his latest survey of justice statistics that the prisons are not full, the number of persons undergoing sentence being 1195. The prisoners represent a rate of 17.78 per 10,000 of the mean population.

New Zealand-born people come creditably out of the survey as showing • a smaller proportion of criminals than the rest of the population. They form 74 per cent, of the population, but ~ they provided only 49 per. cent, of the arrests. The Government Statistician also notes, in his references to the convictions for drunkenness, that among the New Zealand-horn population of European descent there is evidence of less drunkenness than among persons who come from abroad. Ouir women also show a good record. Grime among; them is not extensive. There were 39,594 summary convictions in the Magistrates’ Courts in the year, and only 1977, 6r less than five per cent., were those of women. . The daily average of women prisoners in our gaols is 79.