TREATMENT OF OFFENDERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22139, 19 June 1935, Page 14

TREATMENT OF OFFENDERS

Sir,—Your correspondent "Justice" expresses some very common, but very superficial, views. An old prison visitor like mvself knows but too well that police "records" prove, besides tho offender's offences, nothing whatever except the failure of the measures so far taken to protect the public against him. O, those long "lists!" How well I know them, and the indictments that they are of our present penal system! I remember, e.g., that of A ... it filled sheet upon sheet of foolscap, and made every official declare him hopeless. And so he was, while left to the "broad commonsense" of magistrates and "careful study" of the police; but whan one or two (unpaid) members of the Howard League did a little investigation of A. himself, instead merely of his offences, and took steps accordingly, the offences stopped at once. The "hopeless" A has not molested the public for some years now. For, let me draw "Justice's" attention to this—they found the two main causes of A.'s bad behaviour were results of those causes that the Courts and police had "studied." The man was weak of intellect, and he was friendless. It was our policy of "fine or imprisonment without due investigation" that was all that had really been "hopeless" in his case. Does "Justice" think that good economy? Inebriacv is a disease, and needs not mere detention, but treatment both of body and personality, in a properly equipped hospital, with release on probation only. We have had tho legislation since 1918; when shall we have the reality? One prison officer after another has assured me that we really would see something for our monev then, in the way of "protection of the public." We pay now uselessly for those "prisons and cells all over the country"; yes, and for far too many of them! But we are still told to "wait for prohibition"—just round the corner, no doubt! B. S. Baughan.