GIRLS WHO LAUGH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21326, 29 October 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

GIRLS WHO LAUGH

LIFE IN A PRISON SENTENCES . TREATED ' AS JOKE Prison to Rome people is a joke; to others it is a more comfortable place than the outside world; many prisoners go in ailing, and come out restored to health. All these aire disclosed in the British Prisons Report for 1930. It is also shown that the governors and medical officers of prisons are very human people. The Governor of Birmingham Prison says: "We still receive cases of young persons where imprisonment might have been avoided." He cites the cases of a lad who received seven days imprisonment in default of a fine of 12s for cycling on the footpath and of a girl who was fined 22s or 11 days, for selling tomatoes after hours. Sentences of from seven to 21 days on girls are condemned by the Governor of Holloway, who says: " May I draw attention to the futility of giving these girls short sentences ? They treat their sentences more or less as a joke and are a demoralising influence while they are here." • _ • In the Camp Hill Preventive Detention Prison, there are a number of old men " who are far better off than they are ever likely to be outside," and who have intimated "that they intend to stay here until the last day of their sentence. The medical officer of Hull Prison notes that men who enter prison with severe coughs or chronic bronchitis, very quickly become sound again. He puts this down to the regular life, plain food, adequate rest and the prohibition of smoking. The report reveals that the only remaining distinction between a sentence of hard labour and one of ordinary imprisonment, is that the man who gets hard labour, has to sleep for the first 14 nights without a mattress.