The Governor tries to make them better Citizens and the Chaplain to make them better Catholics

LEARNING TO GO BACK TO LIFE
IC.H.' Reporter TODAY Wormwood Scrubs Prison holds nearly 1,400 prisoners There are four prisons within the prison:—
(a) The Remand Prison for young men between the ages of 17 and 21 from the London area.
(b) The Borstal Allocation Centre, to which boys from all over England are sent for classification and allocation to one of the 14 Borstals.
(c) First offenders, up to three years, from the London area and the Home Counties.
(d) First offenders, serving from four years to life, from
Birmingham to the south of England.
THE purpose of the prison, as I of all other prisons is, " to establish in prisoners the will to lead a good and useful life on discharge and to fit them to do so". In other words the Scrubs, like all prisons, is a place of rehabilitation.
It is the Catholic Chaplain, Fr. James Elherington, who is also the Parish Priest of St. Aidan's, East Acton, who can, and under God does, restore goodness and the will to continue to be good through the personal ministry exercised by him, thereby establishing the basis on which his lay col leagues on the staff of the prison can rebuild the life of the man or boy entrusted to their care.
In the recently redecorated Catholic Chapel, Mass is said on Sunday morning and Holydays of Obligation. The average weekly communicants number SO. Benediction is given on Sunday afternoons, mid there is a special service for young prisoners during the week.
THE interior of the prison is not grim, and the inmates on the whole wear no sullen looks. Some look bored and a few certainly take it on the chin. There are extensive workshops equipped with the most modern machinery, and vocational training classes in bricklaying and engineering.
Evening classes are organised by the London County Council, and there Is a modern Library. Amenities may be plentiful but the inmate knows that in the event of a fresh conviction he will not return to a First Offenders Prison, but to a very different atmosphere.
Perhaps the outstanding feature of Wormwood Scrubs is the medical side of it under the control of Dr. J. J. Landers. The prison is the psychiatric centre for England and Wales and to it are transferred men from prisons throughout the country whom their local Medical Officers have thought to be in need of psychiatric investigation and treatment. It is also the surgical centre and some 500 operations are perfonned a year on men similarly transferred from other prisons.