Harsh penalty ’no answer’

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32994, 14 August 1972, Page 2

Harsh penalty ’no answer’

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON. August 13. /

The problem of crime, and of iolent crime in particular, is far too deep to be cured simply by a harsh penal law, says the annual report of the Justice Department.

“The history of the last 150 years in New Zealand and in England shows almost no correlation between severity of punishment and the crime rate,” said the report.

Throughout the ' world there was a “lamentable propensity” to resort to violence, or non-violent lawbreaking, in seeking change for aims both good and bad. “Unhappily this has all too often paid off,” the report said. "Where rational argument and persuasion within a free community has failed, the fact or threat of violence has succeeded. “There seems to be a deep malaise in our contemporary society, one of whose forms is an increasing disrespect for law and for a hard-won system of reform within the law. “Violence in one side breeds repression in the other. Without a high degree of self-restraint a vicious circle is set up, and attitudes and behaviour polarise at the extremes.”

There was no reason to; suppose that in most cases! the penalties already available to the courts were inadequate, the report said. Many crimes of violence carried long maximum sentences and the courts were! free to make full use of them as they thought appropriate. Although longer sentences: might sometimes be necessary, they were merely “papering over the problem.” I The fallacy of thinking , that a solution lay in morel severe penalties was that j most offenders were not! given to a rational weighing : of the problem. “If they did, few crimes I would be committed,” thel report said.