REFORMATIVE DETENTION

Taranaki Daily News, 25 July 1931, Page 10

REFORMATIVE DETENTION

“ROUGH AND READY”. SYSTEM.

PRISON CHAPLAIN’S VIEW.

Christchurch, July 23.

Charges made in Auckland against the prisons system generally and particularly in regard to lack of distinction between men serving terms of reformative detention and hard labour prisoners are supported in the main by the Paparua prison chaplain, the Rev. F. R. Rawle. The Auckland speaker was Mr. F. A. de la Mare, of Hamilton, who addressed the annual meeting of the Howard League for Penal Reform.

Mr. de la Mare said that society’s duty did not end at the point of conviction. A : desire to give justice should follow the offender to the place of confinement, providing.. facilities \ for his examination and dealing with him as a human being according to the requirements of the case and providing a corrective system of punishment instead of a retributive one. He said it was a delusion that prisoners undergoing reformative detention received special treatment and declared that the influences of gaols were qll against young

prisoners. “I agree with these, charges,” said Mr. Rawle. “There is no reformative detention as such except in a few outstanding cases. The label ‘reformative detention’ given these men is a mischievous thing. It lulls the public into a false sense of security. They imagine that men are getting special treatment, whereas they are just in gaol like the rest of the prisoners. What classification there is is rough and ready. When any protest is made to the Prisons Department the reply is that there is no money for the establishment of separate institutions. • , “It is the system that is at fault, and not the men administering it. The only remedy is an extension of the probation system.”