Feeding and Reforming.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5337, 15 August 1895, Page 1

Feeding and Reforming.

It is not Very satisfactory to learn that 'the Victorian Government expects to settle the questions concerning the treatment of youthful prisoners that hare been raised by some recently published statements, by periodically weighing the unfortunate lads who happen, to be confined .within the gaols of the colony. Profeoßor Anderson Stuart, who haa recommended thiß particular course, appears to have assumed that the health and physical development of the prisoners are the only things that can be affected by improper treatment. But the ordinary lay observer will be inclined to suspect that half fed boys taken from among the criminal classes of marvellous Melbourne may increase in weight without making any progress towards a better moral condition. The complaint r against the gaol systems of the colonies is not that the prisoners are underfed or overworked ; but that, no systematic attempt is made to "reform" the unfortunate people who place .themselves within the clutches of the law. If it were only necessary to improve the physical condition of. the inmates the problem would be simple enough. A liberal dietary scale and fairly comfortable surroundings might be trusted to produce the results aimed at by Professor Stuart. Bat good as these things might be as auxiliaries to a proper system of reformatory treatment, their effect when standing alone would simply be to make the prison a pleasant place of rosort for idle and vicious members of the community. There is reason to fear that there are already scores of men and women who experience no sense of shame when they are sent to gaol, and there are a certain number of degraded people who look upon their committal as a rather happy release from the necessity of making an honest living. These are probably beyond all hope of reform, but there are hundreds of others who have taken only the first step in a criminal career, who could be converted into good and useful citizens if we had a proper 'classification of prisoners that would save the young and unfortunate from association with hardened and irreclaimable offenders.