As premier, Forrest faced pressure from pastoralists in the north-west – including family members and parliamentary colleagues – to intervene on their behalf in frontier conflicts, simultaneously facing pressure to intervene in cases of cruelty and mistreatment toward Aboriginal people. In 1893, on the topic of massacres, he stated that "I must not, in the position I am in, do anything or sanction anything that will lead to the impression that an indiscriminate slaughter of blackfellows will be tolerated or allowed by the government of the colony". In 1889 he had persuaded the Executive Council to commute a death sentence imposed on an Aboriginal man in Roebourne, who had been convicted of murder for a killing under customary law. Forrest's government nevertheless introduced harsher penalties for Aboriginal people caught stealing or killing livestock, including flogging and imprisonment. It also continued the use of Rottnest Island as a prison for Aboriginal offenders, despite his earlier criticism of the practice of taking them away from their home country. In 1905 he defended the use of neck chains for Aboriginal prisoners, stating that were necessary to prevent escape.