Prisoner Students.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 26, 26 June 1912, Page 11

Prisoner Students.

Mr. Winston Churchill’s scheme for making prison a place of reform and hope for young offenders has lieen in operation less than a couple of years, but it is already bearing fruit.

The essential feature of Mr Churchill's scheme was a system of training by

which first offenders, when they found theniselv** out in the world again might be given a eham-e of earning a living outside fie overcrowded ranks of skilled lx hour.

In order to give offenders this chaneo the Home Office arranged with the International Correspondence Schools to give instruction to certain young lirst offenders who are selected by the chaplains and governors. At present the I.C.S. have at Maidstone, Feltham, and Borstal about 30 pupils. Among the subjects they are studying are mechanical engineering, draughtsmanship, ami marine engineering. The latter course is specially popular, for most of these young prisoners seem to want to go to sea. The Home Office pays the fees, and the I.C.S. supply our prison pupils with whatever drawing instruments, books, ete., they require.

In prison the selected students study, do the drawings, and answer examination papers. Their replies are dealt with by examiners who know them — they know all the ordinary I.C.S. students only by numbers. The first of these prison students —

a voting fellow of 25—has just been released after a sentence of two years. Ho took u course in architecture and building construction, and has now beeu placed with a well-known Loudon firm, whose manager alone knows the young fellow’s anteisslents, and who is doing everything he van to give the prisonmade architect what he calls “a squar* chance to make good.*