PROHIBITION ORDERS.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12604, 21 September 1906, Page 6

PROHIBITION ORDERS.

A person for whose benefit an application for a prohibition order was made at the local Magistrate's Court the other day, is reported to have declared that 6he could "got it all tho same." It is not uncommon for th* subjects of prohibition orders thus publicly to deride their effiracy, and experience shows that in v too many cases they aro able to make good their boast, to such an extent that a doubting Justice of the Peace recently asked tho Sub-Inspector of Police in Wellington whether prohibition orders were effective. The

answer was not, of course, as satisfactory as could bo wished, since, as everyone knows, prohibition orders do not absolutely prohibit, but they go some way towards it, and would go further were it not for the criminal foolishness of people who see no harm in supplying prohibited persons with liquor, or assisting them to procure it. The existing law with regard to prohibition orders is much more stringent, and more logical, than the Act of 1581, by which they were first brought into force. $!ho prohibition in those early orders extended only to those persons from whom the euibject of an order might procure liquor; the prohibited one was left free to pit his deeire for drink against the law's efforts to prevent him getting it, and his ingenuity and were generally equal to tho task. Successive amendments of the law, as an article in the Wellington "Post" Teminde us, have, however, made it more difficult for him to eatiafy (his desires. The first change came in 1893, when a prohibited person J&ecame liable to a fine of £10, or three nwntihe , imprisonment, if he procured liquor from a licensee in tho district to which, the order applied. Two years later the loophole which had allowed him to get liquor on, licensed I premises outside that district was closed, for ho became liable to a fine of £5 if ho was found on any licensed premises during the currency of the I order. At <tho eamo time the fine to ■which anyone was liable who in any way helped a prohibited person to procure lirtuor wp.s increased from £5 to £10. Subsequently, in 1904, tho anomalous condition! of tho law which imposed a penalty on a prohibited person who procured liquor, only 'when it was obtained from a licensee, was removed by making it c punishable offence to procure it from "any person •whomsoever." Further, it was provided that the fact of a prohibited person befoig found drinking liquor or having it in his possession was sufficient evidence that he hud procured it and thereby committed a breach of tho law, while Magistrates were empowered to make prohibition ordors on their own initiative against any persons convicted"" of drunkenncsfi three times within, six months. Tho difficulty of identifying prohibited persons still confronts publican-*, but it is so far 'reccgjniised by the law that it is possible for them succesfifuliy to plead ignorance ac a de- j femoe. It sewn* probable, on the whole, that prohibition ordem will beconw increasingly effective. They would bo iMaxe so if it were not that

people naturally hesitate to give information to the police which would result in the fining or imprisonmeirb of a relative who is disobeying an order. As a remedial measure it would be far more effective if action were taken at an earlier stage than ie usually the case, before the subject's moral strength has been so weakened that he has Jost all self-control. The grounds upon which an order may be granted seem wide enough to enable this to be done, and it ie a pity that greater rose k not made of the power placed in the hands of Magistrates.