Murder Rate Lower

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31381, 29 May 1967, Page 3

Murder Rate Lower

(N.Z. Press Association)

INVERCARGILL, May 28. There was a belief that since the abolition of the death penalty the murder rate had risen, but this was not borne out by statistics, the Minister of Justice (Mr Hanan) said in Invercargill on Saturday.

Mr Hanan said that from 1951 to 1957, when capital punishment was enforced, there were 22 convictions for murder—a rate of 1.25 per 1,000,000 of population. Since 1958 there had been 24 convictions, a rate of 1.07 he said.

■These figures were not gen-

erally known when the reintroduction of capital punishment was advocated. Mr Hanan said changes to the law “do no credit to the law, nor to our sense of justice. “We should avoid constant changes in the penalty for murder in line with the particular government in power. “Before 1935 murder carried the death penalty, and from 1936 to 1950 it carried life imprisonment. There was a reversion to capital punish-

ment between 1951 and 1957, but murderers were not executed during 1958-60. “If the death penalty had not been abolished in 1961, it might well have been imposed in some cases since,” Mr Hanan said. At present there was a

| trend away from capital punishment overseas. “As for crimes of violence, there has been no substantial increase in recent years and there is nothing to indicate that the courts are inadequately equipped to deal with these.

| ‘There is limited scope for increasing the current terms, and no evidence that such an increase would diminish the incidence of serious crimes of violence. “Nor does available information support the proposition that corporal punishment has any special value as a deterrent in these cases,” Mr Hanan said.