DOWNWARD MOVEMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 257, 27 September 1935, Page 7

DOWNWARD MOVEMENT.

PRISON POPULATION. WELLINGTON, Sept. 26. Striking evidence of the downward movement of crime in New Zealand is contained in the annual report of the Controller-General of Prisons (Mr B. L. Dallard) which was presented to Parliament yesterday. The statistics show a continuation in the decline noted in last year’s report, in the number of commitments to prison, the total receptions being 558 fewer for 1934 than for the previous year. Since 1931 there has been a decrease of 29 per cent. The number sent to Borstal last year was the smallest since 1925, comprising 81 young men committed direct by the courts, and 18 young women. In addition, 21 young men were transferred to Borstal from other institutions, making a total of 120, as compared with 153 for 1933 and 242 for 1932. This fall in the number of commitments is in sympathy with the general reduction in the number of young offenders, but it also indicates that the courts are now sending to Borstal only cases where such a course is absolutely necessary for the protection of the community and in the interests of the offenders themselves. Many of them have been previously dealt with under the Child Welfare Act, or have been tried out on probation, and they represent a residuum of intractable material, many of whom are of the "hooligan” type, quite undisciplined and uncontrolled. "Of the total of 2376 offenders received into penal institutions during 1934, only 4 per cent, had previously been in Borstal, so that ex-Borstal detainees do hot loom largely in the total commitments by the courts. At the same time it is noted that with the diminishing numbers of receptions and discharges of Borstal eases, coupled with the accumulating yearly totals of recommitments, the ratio has been steadily rising each year. The aggregate number of cases under the Prevention of Crime Act reconvicted over the past 10 years is approximately 25 per cent, of the number released. “Those figures show the necessity for dose attention being given to the problem of after-care for, as previously pointed out, institutional efforts at reclamation are rendered futile if young persons on release are allowed to drift jack to their previous environment and the influences that led to the original lapse. At the present time, oil account of prevailing industrial conditions, it is difficult enough for persons who have no handicap by way of stigma of conviction to secure regular employment, but it is particularly difficult for exinmates, for whom the need of set employment is even more vital to their rehabilitation. Many of these persons are temperamentally unstable, and are not so equal to tlie strain of the economic struggle as normal persons.” The report states that the comparatively sigall percentage of failures of young womeii is attributable largely to tlie 'Women’s Borstal Association’s organised system of placement and after-care through the medium of voluntary associates in various parts of the Dominion.