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Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1239, 7 April 1880, Page 2

It is surely high time that otvr House of Representatives took the necessary steps to pass an. Acfc similar to the .Victorian Acfc to' prevent the influx of criminals. It has often been "with us a matter of surprise as to how so many of the felon class could visit our shores from Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales, and Queensland without notice having been sent to our police authorities as to the histories of these undesirable visitors. They have been enabled to commence and carry but their various depredations with all the skill they had acquired, and with the effrontery bom of a knowledge of the fact that our police had 110 - certain means of identifying [ them as previously convicted felons, t Tit some of the other colonies societies j-f-xist called Discharged Prisoners Aid SV"if tie>", which arc mainly supported ' Lv. b;tnb;rs, merchants, shopkeepers, aiid other citizens, for the purpose of 'paying for the passages elsewhere of noted ex-prisoners, who, by remaining, would be a constant source of danger and expense. Plainly to these societies we aits indebted fox* a constant supply of highly accomplished and desperate scoundrels who invariably are informed that their histories will not be communicated to the authorities of the land to which they are being transported. Criminals landing in Victoria from elsewhere within six mouths from the time of their discharge have, by the operation of the Act to prevent the influx of criminals, two courses open to them, tho firet

being to clear out at once, the other to serve a sentence of six months in gaol. If tliey elect to adopt the fn|t course, which almost invariably if they plead poverty, they with a passage ticket to jfggf adjacent Colonies, with stigEet inactions not to come back S jlll3 New Zealand has tiroe to iiinie been fully with the very -tforst samples of the felonry of the adjacent Colonies. Surely this subject is a fit one for our legiidafcors'ti) talce iii haiui. A shox-t Act might be passed in a few, would«.to extent, "operate as an antidote to this great baSte; v Almost - &ll -fclie gfeat criminals we have had "to' deal "with have been foisted upon us frorix the adjacent Colonies by the operation of their various Ex-Prisoners' Aid Societies, and it is now high time that our authorities took every legitimate means to at once check a continuance of this system, which is now, and has been for years, making New Zealand virtually a harbor of refuge for the very worst of criminals.