HABITUAL CRIMINALS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21323, 16 November 1934, Page 8

HABITUAL CRIMINALS

TO THE KDITOB OT THE I'RSSS. Sir, —Somebody certainly ought to answer both "Curious" and "R.W.," but both need a reply from somebody in sympathy with our present policy towards "persistent offenders," and there, perhaps, not a few of us who have had to do with "such" are disqualified. Would not "Curious" do well to write to the Department of Justice about this, asking leave to publish the information, and then, with your permission, doing so? Meanwhile, I might just offer the information that to be declared an habitual criminal in New Zealand imposes a sentence that is purely indeterminate. As with "Kathleen Mavoureen," it "may be for years, and it may be for ever." Further, what it will be rests entirely upon the decision of the Prisons Board (so-called; it is really only a parole board). And upon what does that decision of the board rest? Upon a real knowledge of the offender, the causes of his "persistency," his social history including that of childhood, his mental make-up and bodily idiosyncracies as revealed by careful scienitfic investigation, or, chiefly, on the record only of his offences? The report of police and prison officers, with a little unsifted information from family or friends maybe, in some cases? I wish "Curious" would enquire, and really ascertain, for I have yet to come across the habitual criminal who trusts the board's "knowledge" of him, however derived; and that lack of trust has come very" 1 bad consequences—for the public.—Yours, etc., I B. E. BAUGHAN. I November 15, 1934.