THE BORSTAL SYSTEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21985, 21 June 1933, Page 9

THE BORSTAL SYSTEM

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —My letter to you on this subject has brought me a communication from an Invercargill lady, containing statements which, if true, show some yery lamentable conditions. My, acquaintance with Invercargill is of the slightest. We have, as yet, no branch of the Howard League there, and for jpe to apply to the department concerned would be, as I have said, useless. May I, then, ask the Rev. K. D. Andrews-Baxter about two of these statements? First, is, it true that women and girls on probation are now obliged to go to the Borstal (of all places!) to report, there being no woman probation officer at Invercargill? \ If so, the women of Invercargill should rise up and demand a woman probation officer. Perhaps some women of Mr AndrewsBaxter’s own congregation could sift this allegation? Secondly, is it true that the unfortunate superintendent (who never was trained in our - prisons) has been obliged by the department to take the position of a figure-head only, with the chief warder really “running the place’,'? This is said to have been arranged during the present year—long after Mr Welldon’s visit! With Mr Andrews-Baxter 1 deplore the inference drawn by the Minister of Justice from his letter as indicating anything against the superintendent; I certainly did not read it so. A boy I know who was at the Borstal two years ago, spoke with real affection of the superintendent, and on the one occasion when I met the latter, he struck me as unusually interested in his charges and anxious to do his very best for them. But no man in so false and unfair a position as my correspondent alleges, could possibly d° good work. Is it so? If Mr Gobbe’s “ investigation ” of the Junior Borstal was at all like his “investigation ” of Paparua. Prison, near Christchurch, then it was utterly superficial. At the latter place he made himself acquainted with physical conditions only, and evoked the general comment that as a farmer he may be an excellent judge, but that prisoners really are more than just human stock! He also showed himself completely ignorant'of the relation between our penal figures and those of England, even to the point of saying that he “did not believe it”— which was surely unwise, in face of the fact that it is established by the figures in the last, English Prisons’ Report, and the New Zealand Prisons’ Report of the same year. But hk was right in saying that ‘we ha.ve very little serious crime. Why, then, have we 16 major prisons as against England’s 38? Why some three times as m an y prisoners as she has to maintain (at 30s each a week!) in proportion to' general population? Why does every year see the number of these increase? Is it because our penal system is completely out of date, and our courts far, far too ready to use imprisonment for minor offences? That prisons breed crime is now well known—crime of our mild variety and worse. Mr Arthur Sykes’s letter interested me. Can he tell me whether, in a court presided over by justices of the , peace in New Zealand, the .clerk of the court is a lawyer? Or is it the police that really guide our justices?—l am, etc., B. E. Baughax. Altaroa, June 17. *