INVERCARGILL BORSTAL.

Southland Times, Issue 22130, 26 September 1933, Page 9

INVERCARGILL BORSTAL.

To the Editor. Sir _Your leading article on Saturday makes very interesting reading and should do much to stir up interest in our local Borstal at least. The great thing is to realize a wrong and then to take steps to put it right. When we remember that the Borstals are meant to be training schools for the reformation of boys and girls who have done wrong, rather than places of punishment, we shall not be satisfied until they are what they are meant to be and all characteristics of a prison taken away from them. We shall demand that they shall be put under the right department and all those things necessary to training schools shall be given them. A close examination of the Invercargill Borstal will show that there is much that is wrong and much to be desired, and these can only be made public after a careful inquiry has been made. Let us demand that inquiry. I should like to put right one statement of mine reported in Fridays Southland Times, viz., that I said the boys in the local Borstal were barbarously treated. I did not say that. What I did say was that solitary confinement was a barbarous means of discipline. One recognizes the need for discipline, but let it be of the kind that will help to bring out the best in the boys rather than the worst. It is astonishing to learn that there are means of discipline in a training school for boys such as belongs to a prison, and these only applied to extreme C3 These boys are our responsibility and we, the public, must not shelter behind the hard and fast Prisons Department. The Department represent the public and it is New Zealand which will have to answer for the treatment of these young people.—l am, etc., K. D. ANDREWS-BAXTER. All Saints Vicarage, September 23, 1933.