Untitled

Marlborough Press, Volume XV, Issue 907, 27 May 1874, Page 3

The following clausa in the annual report on the Dunedin gaol must have, been penned by Mr Caldwell in the strong belief that the subject it dealt with demanded the earnest and immediate consideration of those who make our laws and those who are entrusted with the carrying of them out“ Upon examination of the class of female prisoners received into the gaol, it will be found that the most of them are from the lowest quarter of the town, from localities, where numbers are crowded in lanes, and often wherenumbers are huddled together in the same house. In such an atmosphere, selfrespect, morality, and the sacredness of family life are soon destroyed, and where intemperance reigns supreme, and carries with it no sense of shame or social degradation, we cannot be surnrised if drunken brawls, assaults, and riotous conduct become the order of the day. My experience has convinced me that drunkenness overcrowds this goal more than crime, bo important a fact may warrant my again urging the necessity of a more uniform system, of administering the law as regards old confirmed drunkards who are determined to set law and public decency at defiance. To give a woman who has been twentv or thirty times in gaol for drunkenness one month, can have no p-aniUvedeterrent or moral effect. Society has a right to be pro tected from the demoralising influence of this class of habitual drunkards, buch people, if thev can be reclaimed, will only be so by long or permanent confinement, where, removed fj°'U Ml possibility of obtaining drink, the force of habit is weakened and subdued, and where they gradually acquire new ideas and self-respect. If crime is to be checked we must crush it in its earliest stages before it has matured into habit, prison, solitary confinement, hard labor, even the dark cell have not the deterrent effect upon a young woman who has been in goal four or five times to being drunk and disorderly, and whose longest sentence^was seven or fourteen days. There is a large class of these women coming constantly to gaol who, if on their commitment, received a fentence of two or three years, would, I am certain, be. deterred by such powerful means from drink and prostitution. I repeat, no length of confinement or severity of punishment will deter the confirmed criminal class, but those entering upon the path of evil, especially girls, can be turned aside irom it by the of prison life and the fear of the loss of liberty.