CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 279, 23 November 1921, Page 9

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—Noticing a letter in your paper on capital punishment and believing that 4 considerable number of people are interested in • the question of capital punishment, I wish to make a few remark*. Hanging, or any other similar method as a deterrent for murder, has failed, for the simple reason that the majority of murderers are never normal and those that are murderers by passion (like the abnormals) also are not responsible for their actions. Yet year after year we hang murderers in the hope of deterring others. If our legislators would devote a little time to the study of the murderer from a psychological standpoint they would be able to recognise the absurdity of hanging people who commit murder. Murderers, when they are not so by passion, are instinctive, or in other ■words, the victims of their heredity. The unemployed man, the man who is starving, seldom commits murder. When he does it is not a direct consequence of his unemployment, though it may bring about his act sooner. It k because he is the instinctive murderer or the born murderer. The murderer is found among all classes. He may be religious or irreligious. But seldom is he in straitened circumstances. Poverty does drive people to\theft, but 'the normal man shrinks from the taking of life, no matter how poor he may be. Perhaps the story of a murderer's peculiarities I once knew will illustrate what I mean when I speak of the normal and the abnormal man. While serving a sentence in gaol I came across a murderer and sexual, pervert. His offence . wa-s a horrible one. Vet the man, when sweeping the gaol garden paths, would pick up any insects that 'his broom was likely to crush. AH animal life he loved and would not harm, but for the saeredness of human life he had no regard. The fault was Nature's, not his. He wa-s a departure from the normal, which is the case with the majority of murderers. Again, we always run the risk of hanging a man who is innocent. A horrible thing. It is necessary, of course, to confine murderers for the safety of ourselves, and the punishment should be confinement, not capital punishment. Neither should vindictive treatment be meted out to the murderer kept in confinement, for there is no sense in society revenging itself on the unfortunate creature who is not responsible for his actions.—l am, etc., 176.