MUSINGS and MEDITATIONS

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 22, 30 November 1907, Page 26

MUSINGS and MEDITATIONS

By

Dog Toby

THE word “Home” should denote a place of comfort and repose, a place to which we can repair for rest and refreshment to fit us for

our daily battle with the world. To have a home of one’s own is the ambition of every true man or woman. But the word has been degraded by being applied to places that are often less of a home than prison itself, places of vigorous confinement and degrading punishment. A reformatory home is generally neither a reformatory nor a home, but a place which makes its inmates enemies of society. It is not easy to reform a bad man, it is a thousand times more difficult to reform a bad woman. A man may be deterred from crime by fear of punishment, and occasionally punishment may reform him, but no woman that ever lived has ever been reformed by punitive measures. To punish women by flogging or personal disfigurement is simply to brutalise them beyond all possibility of reclamation, for a woman never becomes really criminal till she has lost her self-respect. The time has come when the whole system on which reformatories arc worked needs consideration. It has been repeatedly proved that severity of punishment is absolutely useless as regards improving character, and practically useless as a deterrent. Crime of all kinds was ten times more prevalent in England when hanging was the almost universal sentence for even the smallest of thefts than it is at present under our more humane laws. The Army and Navy are far less prone to mutiny since flogging was abolished. Better methods are slowly being adopted in our prisons, and it is chiefly in reformatories that antiquated and barbaric systems still prevail. It is the custom in many of these institutions to put the inmates to the hardest and most menial toil. Laundry work and scrubbing floors seem to be the main industries, and neither is particularly inspiring. What is wanted is some system by which women can be taught to make things, and can be taught a little about the management of a home. Give them work in which they can take an interest. Gardening is excellent. Growing flowers, making the grounds look pretty, keeping paths and grass plots neat and tidy—all these things have an influence for good on character—they are humanising. A good dairy might be maintained, and the making of cheese and butter taught. Fruit growing could be encouraged. For indoor occupation all kinds of needlework, not merely that most hateful of things, plain sewing, could be provided, and classes could be formed for cooking and housework in all their branches. Why should not the women be also taught nursing and first aid, and the management and care of children. A reformatory might them reform; at present it usually degrades. It will, of course, be objected that a Home conducted on these lines would cease to be a place of punishment, and that girls would rather enjoy being sent there than otherwise. But this would not be so necessarily. Discipline could be strict, and punishment meted out by a deprivation of privileges. Good conduct could also be more easily encouraged by the prospect of reward in the shape of pleasanter and easier occupations, for only the best women would be employed in thq higher work. The loss of liberty would in itself be a fairly severe penalty. But the whole aim of these Homes should be primarily to reform rather than to punish, to inspire their inmates with a genuine desire to do good rather than a fear of doing ill. For a person who merely refrains from doing ill from fear of the consequences remains an evildoer at heart, and may be trusted to indulge in bad actions when the chances of detection are small. A bad man is bad enough; a bad woman is a thousand times worse.

its most sanguine supporters. Why not, both for good and for evil, and the question of how to deal with them is therefore of great importance. Our present system can hardly be called a success by its most sanguine supporters. Why not'* then, try something else? Abandon the old plan of punitive repression and servile drudgery, and replace it with something that will educate and redeem. For, be it’remembered, not all the girls who are sent to reformatories are actual criminals. Many of them are the victims of misfortune and trust misplaced. They are at a very critical time of life, when character is formed for good or ill, and it is absolutely certain that barbarous methods of corporal punishment and disfigurement can only form that character for ill.