PRISONS DEPARTMENT

Southland Times, Issue 19656, 5 October 1922, Page 7

PRISONS DEPARTMENT

THE FINANCIAL SIDE PASSAGES FROM ANNUAL REPORT The gross expenditure of the Prisons Department for the financial year ended March 31 last was £129,411, compared with £127,444 for the previous year. The cash receipts and cash credits totalled £49,866, against £39,136 for 1920-21, leaving the net expenditure for 1921-22 at £79,545, compared with £88,308 for 1920-21. “A considerable item in our increased •costs during past ten years is the growth in the cost of rationing the prisoners, which was £10.23 per head for 1912, compared with £16.70 for 1921-22,” states the annua! report of Ihe Prisons Department. “This means that during the past financial year we had to expend approximately £7OOO more than it. would have cost us to ration the same number of prisoners in 1912. In actual fact the total cost of rations for 1921-22 was £17,962, against £9405 for 1912. There were, of course, many more prisoners in our ’ institutions in the period now under review than in the earlier year. “In 1912 we had no expenditure on prison farms; last year we expended £6490 in this direction, while in 1920-21 the expenditure under this head was £7339. The policy of opening up and developing new country by prison labour commenced in 1912-13, and has been pursued vigorously ever since. Irrespective of the substantial revenue now being derived from our farms, we have increased the value of the lands of the Dominion by fully £112,000 since the inauguration of our agricultural policy, and it is therefore apparent that the expenditure that has led to this increase is more properly chargeable to the land development vote than to the prisons vote.” Cash received and amounts credited to the prisons vote as the result of prison labour amounted to £49,866 in 1921-22. “The actual cash receipts,” states the Department’s report, “do not by any means coyer the full labour value of the work of prisoners during the past, financial year. A large amount of work is carried out for which the Prisons Department receives no payment whatever, but the expenditure of labour in the various channels has the effect either of developing lands or other State assets or of saving expenditure that must otherwise be incurred.

“The essential value of prison labour employed on public works, for which neither cash nor financial credit was received, was £21,120, and the estimated value, of prison labour employed on farms, industries, domestic work, etc., was £24,628. Thus the total value of prison labour for 1921-22 was £95,614, while the gross expenditure was £129,411, as stated above.”