FLOGGING SENTENCE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 248, 1 August 1941, Page 8

FLOGGING SENTENCE.

REMITTING RECOMMENDED.

(P.A.) WELLINGTON j July 31

The Government has decided to recommend t,he remission of the flogging ordered by Mr Justice Blair to he carried out on four prisoners as part of the sentence imposed on them for assaulting warders in their escape from the Auckland Gaol. This announcement was contained in an answer by the Attorney-General (the Hon. H. G. R. Mason) to a question asked in the House of Representatives by Mr W. P. Endcan (National, Eemucra).

Mr Mason said the recommendation was based qp opposition to flogging as a form of punishment. Debating the answer to the question, Mr Endean said the attack was a cowardly, criminal assault, in which one warder almost lost his life, and he contended that the Government answer was far from satisfactory. The punishment of flogging was still on the Statute Book, and if it were in the law, then it must be enforced. One of the prisoners was a convicted murderer, and was in prison under a particular licence which the Government seemed to hand out to all criminals when they committed offences against people in this country. The crime committed by the. Auckland Gaol‘escapees was the most heinous and the most foul crime ever committed in the history of criminal jurisprudence in New Zealand.

Mr H. E. Combs (Labour, Wellington Suburbs) said the piniishment ordered by the Court would not prevent a repetition of such a- crime. TV hat would prevent a repetition would bo an alteration in the conditions under which men were guarded.