EX-CRIMINALS’ SHOP.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17714, 18 May 1929, Page 14 (Supplement)

EX-CRIMINALS’ SHOP.

CHANCE TO GO STRAIGHT. ’ AFTER 14 YEARS. A shop has been opened in London to give employment to men who have been habitual criminals. The buyer for the business lias served nearly 30 years in prison. No one hut the proprietor knows the records of the men, and he is determined that they shall have a real chance to go straight. He tried to find jobs for men who have been in prison for at least J 4 years, and the difficulties led him to open a business of his own for buying and selling cloth. The proprietor conceived the. idea

when, with concert parties, he vlsitei Camp Hill Prison, at Newport, Isle o Wight, where habitual criminals serv terms of preventive detention. The authorities warned him that hi was undertaking the hardest possibL task of a reformer. He told a reporter:—i “The purpose of this business is*t< prove a theory. My theory is that given the opportunity to -work—and f friend —a large number of liahitua criminals can ho added to those wh< have already made good. “Hitherto the idea has been that yoi must not put convicts together, but-1 am proving that if you give them employment and proper wages they are so interested in their work that they do not hatch other schemes. It is when they have nothing to do that trouble begins.” This business is run so that the men will benefll, for wages will be increased as business increases.