Government Considering Reintroducing Birching

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29791, 6 April 1962, Page 10

Government Considering Reintroducing Birching

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, March 5. The Government has set up a caucus committee to investigate corporal punishment.

The committee, appointed at the last meeting of the caucus, has not yet met, but it will convene for the first time immediately after the next meeting of the caucus early in May. The chairman of the committee is the Minister of Justice (Mr Hanan).

Among the committee's members is Mr G. A. WaHb (Tauranga) who. during the latter stages of the 1961 session of Parliament, asked Mr Hanan a series of questions designed to produce a clear statement of policy on the subject of the reintroduction of the birch, particularly for sex offences. The immediate reaction was a .move to have the subject referred to a select committee of the House of Representatives which would have sat during tn.e Parliamentary recess. Although the proposal was supported by the Labour Party nothing came of it. The caucus committee now appointed will have before it the report of the recent Royal Commission on Corporal Punishment in the United Kingdom. This commission reported unfavourably on the use of the birch.

In Auckland today, the Minister of Health (Mr McKay) told a National Party women’s rally that the caucus committee would consider birching as a penalty for sex offences

Mr McKay was one of a four-man Government panel winch was repeatedly pressed to give the Government’s view on penalties for sex crimes.

At one stage the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake), who was speaking later in the afternoon, intervened to say that the Government would not interfere in the working of the Courts. Parliament made the laws, but it was the job of the Judiciary to enforce the penalties. said Mr Holyoake. Recently the Attorney-General (Mr Hanan) had taken the unusual course of appearing in Court to oppose an appealagainst a sentence of five years for rape.

“I think this is as far as any Government should go.” said Mr Holycake. The panel said the Government would not alter the present law which gave magistrates the right to order the suppression of names of people charged for sex offences.

The Minister of - .lice (Mr Eyre) - said he did not favour a suggestion from the audience that it be mandatory that a man’s name be published. but not a woman’s.