THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, JULY 23, 1923. PRISON REFORM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18458, 23 July 1923, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, JULY 23, 1923. PRISON REFORM.

In an address given by request ■>, to the Wellington Justice?.: Association, Mr. C. E. Matthews, OontrollerGeneral of j; Prisons, has reviewed the evolution of the New Zealand prison system. It wap ■. >i ,u illuminating survey of a very remarkable development. Once the treatment of prisoners was governed by no consideration save that of keeping them where they could not injure others j now they are so treated as to encourage in them a ; desire not merely to refrain from injuring others but to serve them. Once, over every prison gateway there might have been appropriately inscribed, "All hope abandon ye who enter here." To-day the entrance to a prison may \»ith some truth be viewed as a door of hope; for the ruling motive is reform. It is not claimed that the system has reached perfection. But the contrast between 18S0, when Colonel (then Captain) Hume came from the deputygovernorship of Dartmoor to take charge of New Zealand's prisons, and the present day indicates a notable advance. Captain Hume's first report declared the prisons to be "neither deterrent nor reformatory." Mr. Matthews declares that the present object is so to organise the prisons and those committed to them that the best possible results shall be obtained both in regard to the individual prisoners and the interests of the State. That object includes the return of the prisoner to liberty with an ability and an eagerness to take his place as a law. abiding and useful citizen. He is viewed, not as an alien abhorred and abandoned by society, but as a member of society, erring but capable of restoration to a worthy place in it.

j In the old order, which was based j upon the English system of that time has itself undergone since a salutary transformationmisdemeanants were subjected to repressive discipline of a kind calculated to extirpate any wish to attain reputable citizenship. The conditions of confinement, although lacking the brutally cruel characteristics that brought the Howard ' Association into being were nevertheless productive of mental and moral deterioration. Criminal instincts were fostered rather than ■ restrained. Whatever employment was given was of the treadmill kind, blunting all self-respect and engendering an antipathy to law and order. The system manufactured chronic criminals. Nowadays, acting on the saner, more humane .pr;>eipw> ilivJi men are punished by feeing seal; to prison, but are not punished while is prison, the '■ authorities have i devised occupations that develop habits; of intelligent industry and encourage the growth of the selfdiscipline whose lack has landed men in, prison. In this development, the year 190.1 marks a definite turning-point in New Zealand's system. It was in that year that the Hon. James McGowan, Minister for Justice, inaugurated a system of tree-planting by prison labour. Camps for this purpose were established at/Waiotapu and Waipa, near Rotorua. They were the first attempt in this, part of the world to employ a number of prisoners permanently under semi-free conditions. Other camps were subsequently established at- Seddon in Maryborough and at Hanmer ' in Canterbury. These operations were continued until 1920, when the sole remaining camp, on the Kaingaroa Plains, was closed. An idea of the magnitude of the work done •in those nineteen years is got from the facts that 15,932 acres of waste land were planted with 40,719,310 trees, and that the total labour value, as estimated by the Forestry Department, was £65,435. The ultimate value hi the timber grown will be enormous. Before the treeplanting employment was given up there was begun a system of reformatory farms. Waikeria (Te Awamutu), Paparua (Templeton), Waikopai Estuary ..-.', (Xnvfercargill), and- the recent breaking-in of pumice lands at Taupo are all examples of this later departure, still being vigorously pursued. Road construction, sawmilling, brickmaking, building, and other industrial projects have been carried out, and large public works have been completed. Since 1912, the first year in which the Prisons Department pub,lishec! a balance-staet showing cash receipts and credits, work. to the value of £541,387 has been done, while an added value of fully , £120,000 has been placed on lands of the Government and local bodies. Yet all this gain, great as it is, is a trifle compared to the effect on the men who have passed through the hands of our prison authorities. No longer treated as hopeless refuse, they have been turned into a national asset. Waste has become wealth.

The change in our prison system, while in some particulars in the van of recent developments among .'the systems of the world, has proceeded along lines being followed in Britain. There, too, the idea of retributive punishment of prisoners, distinguished with difficulty from vindictiveness, has given place to the more hopeful policy of reformative treatment. Mr. Bernard Shaw, who is a member of the Prison System Inquiry Committee whose report was published lasf year, has clearly expressed the fallacy in the policy that once obtained. "If you are to punish a man retributively," he writes, "you must injure him. If you are to reform him, you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries." Mr. Matthews' statements indicate that mental and moral deterioration was the natural and obvious result of the old retributive view, whereas the common-sense lines of recent management have led to real improvement in the character of 4 r ?ose

* Discipline ' has been maintained, but the rigour of. compulsion has been tactfully displaced by the prisoners' self-discipline The tree-planting ■ system proved, in the view of the authorities, that at least 75 !.'v per cent, of i the; i average prison population are sufficiently normal to be treated in much the same way as any ordinary body ofv£;ee' men could be treated. The introduction |of the indeterminate sentence and reformative detention, together with the large discretionary powers of the Prisons Board, has operated beneficially. Since the Board was instituted in 1911, 1394 . prisoners sentenced to reformative detention have been released on probation, and of these; only 73 have been returned to prison for non-compliance with the conditions of release, and only 95 have been committed to reformatories for further offences, committed on probation. The wellgrounded inference from such facts is that imprisonment, however justly incurred and painfully necessary, need not be inflicted in any spirit of despair.