PRISON SYSTEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21131, 14 March 1932, Page 10

PRISON SYSTEMS.

OLD AND NEW METHODS. SEA CHEST AS A GAOL. ' "Although" the real success of a prison administration cannot lie gauged by the ledger balances, but by the amount of salvage of human wreckage, the finances ar e an important matter," said Mr. P. L. Dallard, Comptroller-General of Prisons and Assistant Public Service Commissioner, in an address to the conference of New Zealand justices of the peace in Wanganui last week.

Mr. Dullard said that up to 1880 the New Zealand prison system had not been organised and few records were available. The earliest record of a prison that he had been able to trace was one in 1830, at Kororareka (now Ilussell), where there was then a white population of about a thousand. This first gaol is stated to have been an old sea chest, and before that tarring and feathering had been resorted to. As progressed more prisons and gaols were established, but serious offenders were transported to lasmania, some were detained in military barracks, and some sent to the, prison hulks, the last of which was destroyed at Otago Heads 40 years ago.

Although a local gaol had been established at Wellington earlier, said Mr. Dallard, the first documentary evidence availably was dated 1849 and was a gaoler's journal which showed in a cryptic form some of the worst features of the early prison methods in New Zealand. Several entries refer to the transportation of prisoners to Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania.