AUSTRALIAN CRIMINALS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20151, 21 May 1928, Page 8

AUSTRALIAN CRIMINALS

SOME “MAKE GOOD” AFTER SERVING LONG SENTENCES. Alan William Moore, the Melbourne life prisoner, who was given his liberty after serving 15 years in Pentridgc Gaol, has gone to the country to work at his trade and to forget his long prison life. In New South Wales there are manymen whose conduct has won them an early release from high prison walls. They have quietly merged into the community they once shocked and become respectable tradesmen and citizens. According to a well-known prison authority few of them have taken ur» a lawless life again. Most of the released life prisoners were not real criminals, but merely “first offenders,” victims of a rash impulse of the moment. In prison they learn trades, such as carpentry and shoemaking, and on their release the Prisoners’ Aid Society find them good billets in the city and the country. The police, of course, keep a strict watch on their movements. One mam who was given a life sentence as a mere youth, was released after 14 years, and diligently followed his trade until last year he had saved enough money to visit his parents in London. There is a shoemaker in Sydney—now married and with a family—who spent 16 years in prison, but is row well respected and prospering at his trade. The dreary days in gaol are gradually becoming a half-forgotten nightmare, and the lesson has been well and truly learnt. Several other life sentence men are winning back the community’s respect in offices and factories. It is unusual for these men to change their names after their release. They seem prepared to face the world without subterfuge, and gradually ;o “make good.”