PRISON CRUELTIES

Hawera Star, Volume L, 7 April 1931, Page 9

PRISON CRUELTIES

RECORD' OF PERSECUTIONS. CAMPAIGN FOR REFORM. The series Of sensations arising out of the recent Polish elections, which resulted in Germany’s appeal to the League of Nations on behalf of the Germans living in Polish Upper 'Silesia, apparently has not been completed. At the first meeting of the new Parliament. startling accusations were made in cdnnection with the forceful methods adopted to restrain persons who might have been dangerous to the power of the dictator during the elections. Twenty former deputies, it is: claimed, were imprisoned. In addition to tl*?ir isolation from the outer world, these political prisoners are said to have been subjected to inhuman prison routine, including beating and torture. Mock; executions were staged in an attempt to break their spirit. The release is also demanded of seven deputies who were re-elected. Whether or not these stories are exaggerated, it will be widely felt that there can lie no smoke without flame, writes a commentator. Point is added to the move which is being made by the League of Nations to bring about penal reform throughout the world. A man accustomed to the penal organisations of the British Commonwealth of Nation’s, unless he happens to have a wide experience of conditions abroad can have little conception of prison life in certain other countries, where methods of correction frenquentl.y seem to linger in the Middle Ages, with the unwelcome addition of modern refinement and cruelty. BLIGHT OP WOMEN.

In order to persuade the League of Nations to act, a society in Great Britain, the Howard League for Penal Reform, submitted a list, of recent cases of gross neglect an.d persecution in prisons, for fine accuracy of which information it could vouch.

One untried prisoner was passed from prison to prison in five different towns, and three different countries. In one prison, he lay on a bare concrete floor with sixty other prisoners, all of whom were engaged in the sole occupation of hunting for vermin. In another case, seventeen women, first offenders along with hardened criminals, were made to live, sleep, eook, and eat in one cell.

Prisoners suffering from tuberculosis and other diseases have been huddled together. Instances of womov and girls being kept at the mercy of armed male warders are by no means rare. With the co-operation of the International Prison Commission, a set of rules for the minimum standards of treatment in prisons has recently been drawn up. Sir Eric Drummond, the •Secretary-General of the League of Nations, has circulated this document to all governments in the League, with, a request for their comments. AVith the League’s methods of publicity in mind, no country is likely to risk exposure by objecting to reasonable standards of treatment. Next year at the Geneva Assembly, it is expected that something in the nature of a prisoners’ charter will be adopted as the official policy of the League of Nations.