GAOL RATIONS. Much to the Convict, Little to the Unconvicted.

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 113, 30 August 1902, Page 8

GAOL RATIONS. Much to the Convict, Little to the Unconvicted.

IT is quite possible that a great many men who languish in a dungeon cell awaiting their trial, and who are innocent in the eye of the law, feel fairly satisfied after they ha\e consumed their 2 11). 2 oz. of gaol rations per day. It is also possible that the criminal who rejoices in the fact that his incarceration is well earned feels perfectly contented on nearly double that quantity of food. Perhaps the gaol authorities, in their economic w.sdom, judge that remorse takes away an unconvicted prisoner's appetite, and that his system doesn't require much food. On the other hand, the robust criminal who is past such qualms of conscience is a good subject to turn food into bone, brain, and muscle. » * * The man on the half- rations is innocent according to British law. Maybe he has lived on the fat of the land previous to his imprisonment. The authorities who take this admittedly innocent man look upon him as of less consequence physically than the robust ruffian who may be a " lifer." Why should this be? There is no doubt that if prisoners awaiting trial were asked which they would do, work hard and get plenty of food, or do nothing, and have plenty of food for thought, but little sustenance for the inner man, they would vote for the former. It is exceedingly humiliating to a man who has a chance of acquittal to be treated with far less consideration than a convicted felon. • ♦ • It is asserted by a visiting J.P. that prisoners awaiting trial are overcrowded, and that they nre locked in their cells for se'senteen hours at a stretch under conditions that would be deemed insanitary elsewhere. Yet these persons are legally innocent ! The wrong to the unconvicted prisoners is, perhaps, only visible by contrast with the condition of the well-fed convict, and it is likely enough that a man who is in suspense does not require the sustenance that a man who has got over it does. There can be no question, however, that the quality of the food served to the former should be of higher class than that served to the latter, and that there t-hould be an equal quantity if the person is capable of eating it. No one has taken the trouble to deny the positive allegation as to the i isanitary conditions that are forced upon waiting prisoners. They may, therefore, be accepted as true. # ♦ * A grave imputation rests on the authorities. It is not at all reasonable that an unconvicted prisoner should be debarred from receiving food from his friends, although it is not reasonable that the poorness of the prison rations should make it necessary. If the bad conditions named are forced upon uncomicted prisoners by the authorities so as to inspire them with a horror of what they may expect if they continue in the evil courses that are only alleged against them, and have not yet been proved, there may be some justification in the official mind, but

to say that an uncomicted man is unworthy of the humane treatment rnetad out to a c mvict is distinctly grotesque, and might easily be altered if the authorities enlarged the official heart.