GAOL TREATMENT.

Marlborough Express, Volume LIII, Issue 195, 19 August 1919, Page 5

GAOL TREATMENT.

DISCUSSED BY COUNCIL OF

CHURCHES

[Peebs Association.]

CHRISTCHURCH, Aug. 19. "As for the Napier Gaol, it is «i criminal manufacturing association," passionately - remarked the Rev. Mr Archer at a meeting of the Council of Churches last night, when the business it was discussing was a motion that the committee should inquire into and report on the treatment of prisoners in the gaols .of New Zealand.

Mr, R. • Dv'Martin, the mover of the motion, said that the churches had allowed the matter to pass unheeded in the past, but the present treatment, of prisoners in the gaols was a relic of savagery, and he -gave many details.

Mr A. L. Beaven said that if the Council supported the motion it would be taking up an attitude of condemning the Justice Department on the word of one man.

The Rev. Mr Archer declared tliat the Napier Gaol was a disgrace to civilisation. What he had seen in that gaol, and he had often visited it, was positively abominable. The motion was carried, Mr Beaten dissenting, and remarking that lie believed that what. Mr Martin said was a tissue of exaggerations.