PAY FOR CONVICTS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 10, 6 October 1937, Page 1

PAY FOR CONVICTS.

PLAN TO HUMANISE GAOLS. LONDON, September 30. Three hundred Dartmoor convicts received their first payment under the new wages system to-day. Some broke down and wept. Many of them were handling money for the first time ill a long period of penal servitude. Ninety per cent, of those paid ordered tobacco and pipes. But so unaccustomed to smoking had they become, that a number became sick within half an hour.

Non-smokers bought small quantities of jam and butter and other provisions not included in the gaol diet. Britain’s new humane prison system, designed to restore the seft'-re-spect of convicted men, has proved most successful. The system is one of granting privileges which are lost by bad behavior, rather than.holding out indefinite hope of rewards. Thus prisoners for the first time are given the opportunity of earning wages which may be spent upon minor luxuries. The Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Iloare, explains that there are two methods open to prison authorities: — (1) To make prison conditions so rigid and conditions so inhuman that it may he hoped that prisoners, after one experience, will he deterred from running the risk of a second. (2) To attempt to restore lost selfrespect and to build up the character of the transgressor.

The first method has not succeeded, Sir Samuel Iloare says, but he points to figures to prove that the second has reduced the number of habitual criminals.