POLICY DEFENDED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27078, 12 May 1949, Page 9

POLICY DEFENDED

RELEASE OF PRISONERS MINISTER’S STATEMENT PA WELLINGTON, May 10. t In a statement to-night, the Minister of Justice, Mr Mason, said: “Lately there has been much discussion about the release of prisoners. A suggestion is made that crime is unchecked and the community in danger because the Prisons’ Board has too soon released dangerous criminals and prisoners who have received life sentences, but in truth, the trouble lies elsewhere. Most prisoners have a fixed sentence and must be released on. its expiration. Inone much discussed case the offender had not been imprisoned at all, but was a youth who had been committed to the care of the Child Welfare Department. Yet the impression is spread that the responsibility for his being at large rested with the Prisons’ Board. It has too largely become the practice to impose short fixed terms when a prisoner is sentenced. Upon the expiration of a sentence he must be released. \ “I should hasten to add that in a recent decision in which an appeal was made for. a reduction of a sentence, the Court of Appeal increased it. This appears to show that the trend towards shortness has now been appreciated, and is being modified. If the prisoner receives a short fixed sentence there is nothing the Prisons’ Board or, anyone else can do about it. There is' only left the question of a small remission that good conduct in prison has earned. The Prisons’ Board does not release 'dangerous pi-isoners under life sentence.“It had been in existence for almost 40 years and although a mistake in so many years might be thought not unlikely, the truth is that not once in all that time has thei-e ever been a life sentence prisonby released by the Prisons’ Board who has subsequently come under notice in relation to a crime of violence. Results have completely vindicated the policy and action of the Prisons’ Board throughout that period. The cry that men on life sentence are released to the public danger was long ago raised, but there has been no substance.”