IMPRISONMENT FOR POLERTY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 310, 30 December 1915, Page 2

IMPRISONMENT FOR POLERTY.

(To tbe Editor.) Sir,—lt is true that your correspondent is not the first who expressed hio belief in imprisonment for poverty; in fact, to the eighteenth-century mind there ■rt'fle no clear reason why a debtor once in prison should ever be released! The reason 1 submitted for the abolition of this barbarous and brutal enactment— the legal descendant of slavery—does not re6t on 7nere sentiment, but upon the fundamental principle of justice-—that all men, rich and poor, β-houkl be equal before the law. Under the present law a poor man owing a debt of any amount not exceeding £30 must either pay or show cause why he should not go to prison for non-payment. Bankruptcy to him is legally out of reach! The rich anan, on the other hand, may owe any sura exceeding £30, ii.nd instead of paying he can arrange to .have the Bankruptcy laws set in motion, invariably escape gaol, and, what is more, be saved from publicity by having nfe matters discussed behind closed doors! The poor .man's affairs—sacred and dear to him and his family—are exposed to the world in the Magistrate's Court, and published in full in the Press! Why thie discrimination in law and in practice? Clearly there is a remedy, as there is for every wrong. In England Lords Cottenham and Donman in 1837, and Brougham in 1844, placed on record reasons why imprisoning the poor should cease for over. Forty years ago Sir George Jesscl — whose name is written-deeply into many a leading English decision—pointed out that the clues of men to be imprisoned for debt wae not the improvident, carelees, foolish ajid childlike defendants— that to-day are cent to Mount Eden from the Magistrate's Court—-but defaulting trustees and similar misdemeanants. This view ie shared to-day by Sir Frederick Pollock, England's leading jurist. If wo visit tho prisons of New Zealand and ccc tlioee imprisoned there for mere poverty, we wonder if Smollett or Dickens wrote the stirring chapters of their best works, or if Brougham or Denman or Cottenham ever spoke against this infamous system, and we stop to think if the laws under which vre live are what Sir William Blackstone described them to be—"the wisdom of a thousand yeans"! It is Tny view that if we are to be considered a progressive people keeping well in the inarch of nations whose codes are humanitarian, then the law permitting imprisonment for poverty must be repealed.—l am, etc, I, i. SULLIVAN.