PRISON REFORM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17263, 2 September 1916, Page 12

PRISON REFORM.

“ GLEAMS OF SUNSHINE” FOR PRISONERS. CHIEF JUSTICE URGES MORE HUMANE FEELING. Sir Robert Stout, Chief Justice, in his charge to the Grand Jury at tho opening of the Supremo Court sessions in Napier on Tuesday, spoke in favour of more prison reforms. “ A great change,” lie said, according to the report in the “ Hawke’s Bay Herald,” “has been made in the class of prisons to which prisoners are sont. We have two prison farms, one at Waikeria in the Waikato, and another at Paparua, nor far from Christchurch. The prisoners work on the farms and their continual exorcise in tho open air has greatly benefited their health, and. I holieve, ttieir conduct. Then there aro two prison camps where the avocation of the prisoners is tree planting. Thov are jn a fine climate in the centre of the No. th Island. They live in little houses, amidst gardens. There aro no sombre prison walls to enclose them. They have done a groat work for the future of New Zealand, and their labour is worth moro than tlieir food, lodging and supervision have cost. They have plained about 50,000.000 forest trees. We have had no sickness in any of these prisons, and this cunnot bo said of our soldier camps. “Then wo have a Reformatory Prison in Invercargill, where a great reclamation work has been and is being doue. Valuable land that will be suitable for intensive farming has been reclaimed. Tho labour these prisoners perform at Invercargill is raoro onerous than free workers perform. The prisoners work in tho open air and they generally gain in weight, in health and in strength. They have school nnd debating classes, etc., in, the evening. Many have been made industrious .and law-abiding .citizens, and the land thov have reclaimed is most valuable. One of the causes of crime is the lack of tho industrial habit, and this is being created in all these open-air prisons. No doubt, ns these prisons aro further developed, the habit of good conduct will get. engrained in them in such institutions and they will learn to labour, and iheir lives will be brightened.

“We havo many citizens in our mental hospitals, and it is accepted by all that to give them their freedom would be a menace to the lives of our citizens. Well the boundary line between crime and insanity is often difficult to define. It was said by one of our old poets : Genius is to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

“Wo might with truth substitute tho word ‘crime’ for ‘genius.’ And if persons have shown a disregard of the sacredness of human life, it would he an injury to tho whole community to let them loose in a civilised society. At the same time a prison need not, and 1 think should not, bp necessarily a place of punishment. It must prevent interned ones from straying beyond certain bounds, but even into the lives of prisoners gleams of sunshine should come. And as our Immune feelings increase, we will see our people taking an interest in our interned ones and moro and moro efforts made to give them happiness, whilst at the same timo they are prevented front injuring, tlieir fellow-men and women. We should realise what in a humorous way Samuel Butler pointed out in his well-known work ‘Erowhon.’ He says that criminals should be sent to a hospital and sick people to a gaol. Well we havo changed the. words ‘Lunatic Asylum’ to ‘Mental Hospital.’ Could wo not change the word ‘ gaol,’ with all the bad meanings it had in days gone by, to some other word that did not havo any such implication? We might ©all it the place of internment. If wo changed our outlook towards persons violating our laws, perhaps juries would not he so ready, as they sometimes aro. to think they are doing a good service to accused persons and to society by acquitting persons who ought to be convicted.”