PRISONERS AND ROADS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16265, 26 June 1916, Page 7

PRISONERS AND ROADS.

WORK ON CONSTRUCTION. REFORMATIVE EXPERIMENTS.. No. I. [bt oub special commissioner.] It gives one some idea of the lack of reading facilities in the North Island "when it is realised that there is actually) no highway through the centre of the country, and that for a distance of over 140 miles' tnere is no road across the island to connect the east coast districts with those on the west. If a settler in the Taranaki pastoral country wishes to exchange stock with anyone in the Bay of Plenty he could find no nearer route to travel by than via Te Awamutu, Tautiri, Waotu, and Rotorua, or by way of Waiouru and Tokaanu to the southward of Lake Taupo, , and neither of these routes is worthy of anv better name than rough tracks. Put in another way, no traveller by the Main Trunk line wishing to go to the eastward could find any sort of road between Waiouru and Te Awamutu or Kawa, a distance of 142 miles, and if he wanted to !go westward to the settle J**districts of Wellington or Taranaki he would only find on e or two roads which could be used with any degree of safety. That the people of one side of the island should be so cut off from those on the other ; that the main railway line of the North Island should have so few and so inadequate connections with the country on either side of it is undoubtedly a great handicap to the full »use of the railway, and a serious barrier to the development of a very large area of land. The State and Roads. And how is this part of New Zealand to obtain roads? The local bodies as represented by the county councils have not the means to make them even if they had the inclination to do work which would benefit the State more than themselves, and the estate seems more inclined to encourage settlers in various districts to tax themselves for road-making purposes rather man to recognise that roads should be national undertakings, to be built and maintained by the State just as railways An interesting and important method of road-making is now being tried in the district between Waimarino, on the Main Trunk line, and Tokaanu, on the southern side of Lake Taupo. It" is -simply the utilisation, of prison labour for "road-mak-ing purposes. Most countries have endeavoured to ultilise prison labour in a variety of ways; some use it for industrial purposes, but experience has shown that the only form of work upon which it can be satisfactorily employed is that which/does not compete in any way with private enterprise. In New Zealand prisoners have for some years been employed in the planting of State forests in various parts of the Dominion, and at the present time they are engaged not only in this useful work but in reclaiming waste tidal lands at Invercargill, in the establishment of a State prison farm in the Te Awamutu district, and all other forms of work which can be classed as beneficial to themselves as well as to the State. New Prison Methods. The old idea of treating prisoners by . punishment only; of keeping them locked jup in cells or behind the grim walls of gaols, has exploded in ' every civilised j country. The newer and more humane idea is to make prison life reformative by giving those who have broken laws 01* sinned against society the opportunity to turn themselves into useful citizens by doing useful and honourable work under ■ healthy conditions. This is why New Zealand established its tree-planting camps this is why it is starting a prison farm near Te Awamutu; and this is why it has commenced its road-making on the Waimarino Plains. That a man who has wronged the State pays the penalty, for his wrong in helping to create something for the benefit of the State is a reasonable proposition; that'a man who hasdone a wrong or many wrongs is better helped to do right by being given a chance to redeem himself than by Blind punishment is the firm belief of those who are responsible for the new methods of prison treatment. No one who has any knowledge of human nature, and certainly no one who has read the reports of prison officials, or of the Prisons Board, or who has talked with discharged prisoners themselves, can fail to recognise that State work for State offenders has had already very good results and may have better results still as the methods are gradually improved. Utilising Prison Labour. Personally, I , know no better or more useful or more necessary work that the State can perform than the making of good roads, and I know none better adapted for being carried on by physically fit prisoners. It is work which includes an infinite variety of occupations, the clearing of forests, the handling of teams for ploughing and scooping, the management of machinery, bridge and culvert construction, carpentry, fnacksmithing, and a hundred other things. Such work is excellent training for men who have frequently taken 'to crime because they had no profitable occupation to follow. After a course of such work an able-bodied man could find payable employment in almost any part of the world, and it is work which tends to make men able-bodied, quite different from the soul-deadening, paralysing tasks which in past- years prisoners have had to carry out behind stone walls. No contractor, or working man, in New Zealand need ever be afraid of suffering through competition in road-making by prisoners. In the first place, according to the reports of the Department of Justice the total number of persons actually in prison on a given date only represent about 8i people for every 10,000 of our population, ahd during the last 35 years the total number of persons in prison on December 31 of each year has only ranged from 534 t0.919, and out of this small number only a small proportion is available for road-making purposes. Of course, during the twelve months of the year a large number of prisoners are admitted and discharged. One of the largest gaols in the country received last year over 1600 males and 251 females, but during the same period about an equal number were discharged or otherwise disposed of, and out of this number only 55 were ordered for reformative treatment, which includes many other forms of work besides road-making. Incentives to Reform. At the present time only about 50 State prisoners in the whole of New Zealand are engaged in road-making, and it is doubtful whether at any time more than 100 or 200 would be available for this class of work throughout the Dominion. Apart from the small number of prisoners likely to be available at any given time, it "is only proposed that they should be engaged on roads which might be called purely State undertakings, that is. roads which although necessary and valuable could not and would not be constructed by. local bodies or by private enterprise. * Whilst engaged in road-making, treeplanting, waste land reclamation and other similar work for the State prisoners receive, besides a useful training, certain rewards and concessions. If they behave themselves well and show any inclination to improve themselves they are able to win a certain remission of sentence and, moreover, they obtain a small wage which accumulates and is available on .their discharge. All this gives them an incentive to • reform and they also know that good conduct on their part practically assures them of a new start in life when they are discharged. .