OUR PENAL SYSTEM

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22004, 30 January 1937, Page 18

OUR PENAL SYSTEM

TO TUB EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir, —Your correspondent “Penal Progress” writes letters that arouse considerable interest. His South African figures I cannot myself check, but they certainly suggest that that country is making much better penal progress than we. Should he not, however, leave our Maori figures out, if he omits those for South African natives? I should like to ask him how we should come out then? (Not that, from a personal knowledge of both kinds of “native,” I would suggest that our Maoris live as separate an existence from that of pakehas as kaffirs from Europeans, but the comparison would seem fairer?)

My own figures relate more to England. But there, too, we come out very badly! The daily number of prisoners is' the number to take if we would estimate, not the national crimeincidence, but the taxpayers’ burden; and last year this was given in England as just over 9000. Ours, we have just been officially told, has now dropped to an average of 947; and this drop, considering that the 1936 Prisons Report gave it as 1212 (for 1935), is indeed encouraging, there having been at any rate no manifestly great increase in crime as a consequence (let us note!). But, had we but the English proportion, even on her last year’s figures, we should be able to get down to a daily prison average population in New Zealand of 350; and so make most appreciable reductions in our bill for prisons upkeep, prison salaries, and prisoners’ maintenance, as well as in human misery—why can we not? Perhaps we can—if, for one thing, our courts will give up "declaring” habitual criminals so freely, and also be less lavish with long sentences otherwise. For it is the length of sentences, as well as the prison _ committals, that so enlarge our “daily average.” If England lists only 116 as “habituals,” why had we last year more than 90? If she gives sentences of three years only in 1 per cent, of her year’s cases, and of longer sentences only .0 .per cent, (vide her last report), and still keeps clear of much serious crime, could not we? ■ “Penal Progress” mentions our large number—more than 750 yearly—of “recidivists." These, too, naturally keep up our “daily average”—but they also indicate a definite failure —in our penal policy, in that we keep paying the cost of their offences and imprisonments over and over again, and all uselessly!— Yours, etc., B. E. BAUGHAN. Akaroa, January 28, 1937.