Harsher sentences ‘no cure for rise in violent crime’

Press, 29 May 1978, Page 4

Harsher sentences ‘no cure for rise in violent crime’

PA Wellington The Justice Department strongly opposes increased and harsher punishments to curb the rise in violent crime. In a 60-page submission to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Violent Offending, the Secretary for Justice (Mr G. S. Orr) said society’s energies should be concentrated on preventing crime. “Retribution or revenge (itself a subtle form of violence) manifested by harsher punishment, while satisfying to some, has nothing to do with attacking the causes of crime and little if anything to do with preventing it,” he said. In spite of the best efforts of which any society was capable and was prepared to be able to afford, there would always be inadequate parents and sons and daughters. There would always be antisocial behaviour and criminal offending. “At best we can attempt to ameliorate the circumstances and conditions which give rise to violent offending,” Mr Orr said. The department concluded that violent behaviour was frequently the result of people’s , living conditions and the daily pressures to which they were subject. “It is the recurring conclusion of most New Zealand and overseas research that many violent offenders come from over-large or broken families, that .they have sometimes been victims of violence in their childhood, that they have met rejection and failure in school, and that they have a common history of early institutionalisation. “The conditions that tend to breed crime and violence — ignorance, dis-

crimination, under-achieve-ment, poverty, inadequate social amenities, unsatisfactory housing, and insufficient jobs — must be attacked,” Mr Orr said in his submissions. On violent offending, he asked whether the present law was adequate, and what preventive measures were called for. He said society’s abhorrence of violent crime was clearly expressed in present sentences. In addition to mandatory life imprisonment for murder and liability to life imprisonment for manslaughter, there were five offences for violence which carried sentences of up to 14 years imprisonment. As well, there were three additional offences carrying sentences of up to 10 years imprisonment. Other violent offences, including some serious traffic offences, carried a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment, and various forms of assault were punishable by between six months and three years imprisonment. Mr Orr said the department could see little gain in terms of curbing crime by increasing these maximum sentences, and believed it was for the courts to use them in appropriate cases.

Figures for convictions subsequent to increased sentences did not support

the view that increased maximum sentences act as a deterrent.

“In 1974, for example, the penalty on summary conviction for assaulting the police was increased from three to six months. Notwithstanding this doubling of the possible penalty, recorded assaults on police rose from 533 in 1974 to 734 in 1975.” Mr Orr said it was well established that corporal punishment — flogging and birching — had no effect as a deterrent to offening or re-offending. In 1961, New Zealand experienced an upsurge in gang rapes which was accompanied by insistent public demands for harsher retributive measures, particularly a return to corporal punishment, which had been abolished 30 years before.

"Parliament refused to bow before the storm and the incidence of gang rapes fell as dramatically as it had risen,” Mr Orr said.

Turning to capital punishment as a deterrent to homicide, he said there was “no shred” of evidence that the threat of execution was a more effective deterrent than the threat of life imprisonment which usually took its place. Mandatory minimum sentencing was also dismissed as a deterrent..

The ability of penal sanctions to deter the ordinary offender from reoffending was also dubious, he said.

“In July, 1972, when a census of inmates of our penal institutions was taken, 61 per cent of male prison inmates had previously been in prison at least once and 40 per cent had been in Borstal.

“This is not to say that deterrence does not work at all, but rather to say that at best it works uncertainly and its effect is different on different people in different situations,” said Mr Orr. The factor most likely to deter an offender was not the punishment he was likely to receiver, but whether he was likely to be caught and sentenced at all.

Replying to assertions that prisons are too soft, Mr Orr said that both reason and experience showed that harder, prison treatment, far from improving offenders, made them worse..

Even under the best of conditions imprisonment itself was a severe punishment. If the community expected the Justice Department to attempt to rehabilitate inmates, it could not expect this to be achieved under a repressive regime, said Mr Orr.