S.E. BAUME.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 8 October 1926, Page 5

S.E. BAUME.

RELEASED ,FROM I^RISON. CONSIDERABLE COMMENT. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. ■Considerably .comment has been evoked by the release from prison of Sidney Ernest Baume, whose ease excited great attention when it way before /the courts some months ago. In reply to a question as 'to the. operation of reformative detention measures, the At-torney-General (Hon. F. J. Rolleston) said that once a man was sent .to gaol it was not the policy of the Prisons Departnjfc to supply the public with .any information as to that man’s movements while in prison, or as to his subsequent release. If information of that kind were broadcasted it would.be most unfair to the prisoner, whom it was 5T hoped to reform with a view to making him a good and useful citizen afterwards. If tlio fact were advertised that a man had just been discharged from prison, what chance would he have of making a. fresh start l A sentence of reformative .detention was essentially ono which was .subject to review by the Prisons Board, whose recommendations invariably were acted upon. -i .1- ■' (Following on the release, before his sentence was served, of Mackay, Wanganui’s ex-Mayor and ono time'prominent solicitor, who was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced; to 15 years’ imprisonment, the release ■ of Baume has caused a sensation. Baume was 'sentouced in February, last to .3 years’ treatment for deWellington Post Office of £llOO. Baume liad served a little over seven months of his sentence when he was released. William Smith, Baiimc’s accomplice and dupe, who was sentenced to 12 months’ reformative trcatK ment, is still in gaol. Balime’s mother, Mrs Rosetta Kane, is the wife of E. W. Kane, Clerk of the House /of Representatives, and accompanied her son to Sydney when he.was-released. A condition of the release was that Baume should not return to Wellington, and that he should sail by the Marama for Sydney.) ■ •• •