DEVIL’S ISLAND

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 283, 14 November 1929, Page 10

DEVIL’S ISLAND

SALVATION ARMY TO INVADE PENAL COLONY TO ALLEVIATE SUFFERINGS OF CONVICTS. HOPE TO WIN THROUGH KINDNESS AND HELPFULNESS. The Salvation Army is to tackle the hell of Davil’s Island and send officers to the notorious penal colony on the mainland of Guiana in South America (says “The New Yoik World,” in describing the Army's latest field of operation). This announcement was made by General Higgins after a series of conferences with M. Louis Barthdu, French Minister of Justice, and other Departments of Justice officials in Paris.

‘■The main object of the Army will be to alleviate suffering among the convicts and to introduce more humane conditions,” said the General. “We expect to start work within six moriths. Public opinion in France is forcing the Government to take action with a growing demand that Cayenne be either abolished as a prison pen or that a radical change be introduced in administration a..J living conditions for thousands of men in the world’s largest and most terrible convict camp. As the Ministry of Justice cannot see its way clear to abolish the colony, th© Salvation Army volunteered to inaugurate a campaign of social work throughout the colony, looking after the comfort of the prisoners and helping the men to get a- footing in civil life during the years that they will live outside the camp while still under the sentence of banishment from French soil.

“We know we are to deal .with fiends and desperadoes, and also with mental deficients, but we hope to win them over with kindness and helpfulness,’’ said General Higgins. “Loving hands have often been capable of making broken chords vibrate once more,” he added. The Army’s commission for Guiana was granted after one of the pediodio outbreaks of public indignation in Paris following the publication of tho introduction of new forms of punishment for the incorrigibles in the colony. The men, it was reported, were daily working within tho shadows of the guillotine. It is a rare thing to see a guillotine mounted in France, the custom being that the “widow” shall be kept stored in sections, and that these shall only be assembled and mounted during tho night before an execution. The machine is taken down immediately afterwards.

In Guiana the guillotine is mounted day and night. It is hoped that the sight of the head-cutting machine will have a solutary effect upon the troublesome pf the convicts. As the Commandant, or Governor, of the colony has full powers of life and death the men know that the raising of the machine is not an idle threat.

THREE CLASSES OF CONVICTS.

There are three classes of convicts in Guiana. Those confined to the scorching rock of Devil’s Island, off the coast, are men condemned for some particularly heinous crime, or because they are absolutely intractable in the mainland camps. Then there are the “relegues” and the “forcats.” The “forcat” is a bandit and desperado, who has killed his man, while the “relegues” are petty thieves, who have been sent out of France on account of the number of their convictions.

Bitter hatred exists between these classes of prisoners, and they are kept apart tn separate camps. There is, further, a class of liberated prisoners who, however, are forbidden to return to France for ten years after the expiration of their sentence. They live in the villages surrounding the pens, and often have their wives and children with them, or hare married natives of Guiana. Few men are kept behind bars. Most of them walk about in the settlement quite unmolested. The percentage of escapes is low. During the last ten years only six men have succeeded in fighting their way through the poisonous and reptile infested jungles and marshes of Guiana. Of these six, two landed on foreign territory, where laws of extradition exist, and they were returned. Bloodhounds and armed guaids generally suffice to bring back any breakouts. The Salvation Army plans, first of all, to reorganize the medical service of the colony which is admittedly inadequate. Few French doctors in the civil service feel disposed to live in a climate that is considered murderous to a white man. Moreover, tlie convicts’ particular hatred is reserved for the doctors. Any convict, it is said, would kill a prison doctor if he got the chance. This is due to the fact that the convicts attribute half their ills and diseases to the doctors, who adhere to the prescribed regime of quinine dosing but never go beyond the amount allotted to each man.

The majority who are sent out to Guiana fulfil the destiny intended for them by the judicial authorities in France. They die. Most of them are men whose sentence of death has been commuted to twenty years “bagne,” as imgrisonment in Guiana is known, isease wears down the strongest within a few years, in a country where manual work for a white man is impossible, but where it is demanded of convicts and enforced by armed Arab guards known for their lack of sentiment. Thousands of exconvicts live in one of the villages.