Corporal Punishment For Some Crimes Urged

Press, Volume C, Issue 29524, 27 May 1961, Page 12

Corporal Punishment For Some Crimes Urged

Power for the Supreme Court to order corporal punishment in suitable cases is badly needed, says a leading article in the latest issue of the “New Zealand Law Journal.” Steps should be retraced to some extent to the sterner methods of former years, says the article, which is in reply to letters from Mr F. C. Jordan, honorary secretary of the Howard League for Penal Reform, and Mrs E. Kirk, LL.M., of Auckland.

Corporal punishment was abolished in New Zealand by the Crimes Amendment Act of 1941. The crimes for which it was prescribed included unnatural offences, attempts to commit unnatural offences, disabling to commit a crime, indecent assault, rape, attempt to commit rape and sundry types of defilement.

The cases in which corporal punishment was actually inflicted were probably few and far between, because the crimes that carried that penalty were by no means as common as today and because the Court exercised wisely its discretion to order flogging, the journal says. In the days when corporal punishment was in force, the crimes which carried it as a possible punishment were not as prevalent as they are today. Deterrent “Why was this?” the article continues. "Does it not indicate that the mere possibility of such a punishment, even though rarely used, was a deterrent? “Rape has now become so prevalent as to alarm the whole community. It is hardly possible to pick up a daily newspaper without reading of rape having been committed or attempted. In pre-war days such crimes would have been unheard of. Now they are common. "We suggest that what is badly wanted is the power vested in the Court to order corporal punishment in suitable cases,” says the journal, referring to rape.

“The judges may be .elied upon to exercise a wise discretion as to the cases in which their powers may be exercised, and should a judge err on the side of harshness the Court of Appeal will soon rectify the matter.” A kind of corporal punishment less severe than that prescribed before 1941 would fill the bill now, it says. Turning from punishment for rape, the journal suggests that similar but milder punishment be inflicted for crimes repeated after earlier attempts at correction, particularly for youthful vandals and delinquents. The article says it is not known how the new detention centres will work, but it understands that “what is being aimed at is a tough Army type discipline where everything is done at the double." “This sounds well, but the

discipline must be enforced, and the type of inmate to be brought under control is quite capable of resisting it.

Resort to Force "In the ultimate, resort must be had to force where all other measures fail; and it is better that the force should be applied under the direction of a magistrate than that it should be in the uncontrolled power of a prisons officer." Corporal punishment would play a useful part in the penal system, not as a substitute but ancillary to methods advocated by the Howard League and to be used only where those methods had failed with an individual Or obviously would fail if they were applied. Corporal punishment would not be inflicted on mental defectives wholly irresponsible for their actions. .