"JAIL FROM WITHIN"

NZ Truth, Issue 725, 10 May 1919, Page 5

"JAIL FROM WITHIN"

AttORNEY-GENERAL HALL AND HARRY HOLLAND Labor Leader's Experiences m N.S.W. Prisons jj Interesting and Instructive Missive

Across the Tasman, Vance Marshall, author of "Jail From Within," has been having a tilt with the New South Wales Attorney-.General, the Hon. D. R. Hall. In criticising Marshall's pamphlet front his place m the House, , the Attorney-General said, "I have ; met many prisoners when they come out of gaol — men just as good m every respect as Marshall. Take the example of Harry Holland, now a member. 0% Parliament m New Zealand. Holland had tola experience m gaol, and while he was iii gaol I sent him books... . . Z had opportunities to meet him after' he came out of gaol; and if the suite of affairs which Marshall sets forth had existed, oan anyone suggest that Harry Holland would not have noticed it?-. . . The picture he gave of the prisons of this State was as different from the series of falsehoods m Mar- , shall's book as anything could possibly be; 1 On reading this statement by the Hon. D. R, Tj&U, Marshall had hi« "doots," and^s^as moved to communicate with . Mr. Harry Holland m New ! Zealand, as to the true position. Mr. Holland M.P., replied as follows: I '■■ ! March 24, 1919. 1 Mr. Vance Marshall, Sydney. | Dear Comrade,— l have read with much interest the extracts from "Hansard" which you have sent me, and ■have noted the use of.my name iby Mr. I>.i R. Hall, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, m his reply to your charges re the N.S.W. prison system. I have, of course, read your pamphlet, "Jail From Within." May I point out that my position on both occasions when I "enjoyed" the hospitality of the N.S.W. "Government was vastly different from yours. The first time I entered a N.S.W. prison was m 1896. when I was fined £ 50 — with the alternative of three months' imprisonment — arising out of a newspaper article I had written around the Labor Bureau and it£ superintendent's policy m connection with a Newcastle strike.* I then .-.,>.: RANKED AS A "CONFINEE," and was entitled to wear my own clothes and have my own food and books supplied from outside. On that occasion I saw very little of the inner prison life as the ordinary prisoner Bees it. There was, it is' true, a btfie! period of that time during which 1 rashly undertook gaol work, and into which some thrilling experiences were crammed, demonstrative of the briitalising- aspect of the prison system. My sentence at Albury — arising out of a speech made m connection with the great Broken Hill strike of 1910— was two years' hard, labor,' and carried with it a month's solitary confinement and an additional five .months' "separate" treatment. During, the whole of that six months I was not" supposed to speak to any prisoner, nor was I permitted (under the regulations) to converse with a warder. I was not entitled to receive either tea or sugar, and had I been a smoker, I should not ihave been allowed tobacco. During the month's "solitary" I was only supposed to have the Bible for reading. The then Deputy- Comptroller, Mr McCauley, will remember that he visited me on the day on which I was released from solitary, and that. I denounced ; the prison system to him when he asked me if I had any complaints to make. He may remember that 1 quoted for his benefit an incident recorded m Jack London's "White Fang." If you are a reader of London's books, you will know that his best writings have to do with animal psychology. In my opinion, his greatest book is "The Call of the Wild," to which "White Fang" might be said to be a companion book. White Fang is a wolf-dog, and at one stage of his career he is being trained for a fight with another dog. To make him more savagely dangerous to his opponent he is caged vp — isolated . from his kind and from the' humans as welL He is also scantily fed. Mr. McCauley will remember .that I told him: "What the trainer does with, the fighting dog to make him savage arid brutal, your prison system does with men to make them better j

REV« W. FANCOURT (Vicar St. Thomas's, 1 "Wellington • ' .. . South). A parson, sans snuffle or side, His flock all regard him with pride; For he grapples with sin, Quite determined to win, And the victory's his, "home and dried."

•men, and the result is that you develop all that is brutal m them." When I came out of prison (I was released at the end of five months as the result of huge petitions), I DENOUNCED THE SYSTEM m the same terms, as those who attended the meetings >held to welcome me will remember. - Now, it is true that Mr. Hall sent literature to me while I was incarcerated. 1 have still his copy of Darwin's "Origin of Species" (which' a warder carried about for weeks' m an endeavor to smuggle m to .me, but which eventually I ; was permitted by the Comptroller to receive,^ the Prison Regulations notwithstanding, and wiiicU made a welcome, study during many w,eary and otherwise tedious hours). But Mr. Hall is m error when he says he met me after my release. The, first time we met after that happeni»i was more than five years later

—m 1915, when he visited New Zea<* land. . „ ' I might mention that after I had ' been three months m Albury Prison, the regulations affecting the classification of prisoners were altered, and the conditions of my sentence underwent modifications accordingly. Albury was a very small prison-* '. there were only about twenty prison-; era there, and almost of the warden v were' i IN ■ SYMPA/THY WITH MB. Only ons. wardar betrayed any dartre to make things unpleasant for me. 1 had no rdaaoji, therefore, to complain oi! the immediate administration. Ail any attack was directed against th« , system; and this I did not spare. The differences m the two cases ar*s these. 1 was held In a small prison \ (J quite eight years earlier than you 1 gained your experiences In a large es- , tablienm-ent with a far larger number of warders — and' consequently with, warders of varied and Varying temperaments. It follows that Mr. Hall i& not m any Way entitled to v*& my case for the purpose of refuting you* charges. He ought not to need to be; told that m a multiplicity of cases the warder himself becomes quite as - much the victim of the bad prison en« { vironment as does the professional^, criminal. The whole prison system i£? one of concentrated injustice based .onV a foundation of wrong; of tyranny, made more tyrannical because of ths arrogance of an array of petty tyrants who are in* turn tyrannised over from i above; of mean spying by warder on warder, by prisoner on prisoner, bQ warder on prisoner, and by prisoner o« - warder. Added to this infamy la th* sickening atmosphere OF MENTAL FILTH, , which pervades «very prison, aiid th< l / cloud of hopelessness which oVer- \ shadows the life of the captive doomed' r to endure the coming and going of the years to the clanging of bolts and the -i j angling of keys — a monotone of mad-"* dening despair. , ' My experience of prison life convinces me that no man or woman ever came out of an Australian prison better if or having gone m, but always worse— if not* mentally worse, then most certainly physically worse. There are, of course, always hereditary legacies to be encountered; and I suppose any phase of Ihuman society, will not fail to produce its abnormal individuals and its "throw-backs" — people who rightly belong to altogether different historical periods; but the fact remains that /Capitalism is a huge '• criminal - manufacturing institution, and that the modern prison system, whether it finds its expression m New Zealand or m Australia, tends to fasten ; an Indelible brand of felony on every . man and woman who comes within -- 1 the grip of its terrible tentacles repre- > 4 < sented m the statutes relating to criminal life — especially those men, and, - women unfortunate enough to be' seized m the morning of their youth. AS PRISON DOORS ENDURE with 'their locks and bolts and bars, so long as the "criminal" is regarded aa a subject for punishment and not ' for ;„. medical care, the system will stand for ' >. a mockery on the one hand and amen- & ace on the other— ra, menace to the *& Labor and Socialist 'movement as a "?, whole and to every Individual who vS essays to give expression to honest *y, thoughts which run counter to the -^ vested interests whose representatives A are m political control. This will be" so whether the system be as viciously * administered as you found it, or more *» humanely applied, as dn my case ai f Albury. , A real civilisation will have its hos- f <, pitals and asylums for the physically v and mentally deficient, its places where . the sick (whether of body or mind) ' l will be cared for and if possible cured; l but m such a civilisation a prison will no more be tolerated than the public: breaking of a man or woman on a wheel would be tolerated to-day. — Yours, etc., H. E. HOLLAND.