CRIME AS A DISEASE.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 3835, 17 April 1899, Page 2

CRIME AS A DISEASE.

ITS TREATMENT AND CUBE. A careful looking into the Hoa* Office report on the crinZJ statistics for 1897, reveals a state of things (says a London jouinatt which cannot be considered at A a satisfactory commentary w . our ways of punishment ft serious crimes diminish, and exec** tions tend to grew exceedin^r ' rare — as they unquestionably doU. there is another side of the qu«». - tion which can satisfy no oae. "jv , number of minor offences grow at a disquieting pace, and reddivim is, to all appearances, the incunjfofe evil of the prison system. Dmin. the year 149,942 offenders *q5 sent to prison, more than half i* default of paying a fine. B«t here is the significant featni*. Many more than half, viz., 85,g90 had been convicted before. Oat of this number, 35, 199 had been «*. victed more than five tunes, aa& 1695 had served terms of penal servitude. There is only one coa. elusion to draw from these figure* and it is drawn by Mr H. Bl Simpson, the official who is i*, sponsible for the report. *It a fact that has to be faced,' £c says, that neither penal servitude nor imprisonment serves to defer the habitual offender from n, verting to crime, and it is the habitual offenders who form the bulk of the prison population,' That is so. We have deviled t system of punishment which w mainly a process for manufactory criminals and imbeciles. And ao it will remain until we cast off the notion that the business of tht State is to make reprisals on the offender, and not to transform him by rational discipline into a use* fill, at all events, an inoffensim member of the community. Itjfe suggested in the report that the diminished, severity of sentence*, and the consequent liberty of the prisoner at an earlier period thaa formerly to return to his old practices, is to be taken into account when we consider the actual number oi convictions. Perhjun so. But the fact, if proved, would certainly not be an argu* ment against lighter sentences, but only a further illustration of the uselessness of mere imprisonment of any kind as a redemptive influence on the criminal. The problem is, as the prison reformen have reiterated time out of mind, not to perfect your punitro system in the direction of greater severity and supervision but ly some means to educate the offender, so that his misapplied energy may be diverted into other and less destructive channels.