The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1911. PUNISHMENT AND CRIME.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1235, 18 September 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1911. PUNISHMENT AND CRIME.

4 . A startling suggestion is made by a writer in the Nineteenth Century magazine, Mr. H. S. R. Elliot, in the course of an interesting discussion of the' question of the punishment of those. guilty of crimes against society. Admitting that crime can only be suppressed , by means of punishment and the prospect of punishment which will deter others from the commission of antisocial acts, the question of the form which the punishment should take in order to best achieve its object naturally arises. First of all, the prisoner is segregated to prevent him for a time at least from inflicting further injury upon socicty. Secondly, as a deterrent to others his segregation must be accompanied with various pains and penalties, the witnessing or hearing of which may serve as a warning to others. More recently the question of the reforming of the criminal during his period of confinement has been receiving increased attention; and the "demands of humanity" _ have also prompted the introduction of moro lenient treatment of prisoners confined in our gaols. With all these ideas the writer of the article in the Nineteenth Century is in sympathy and agreement. He summarises the four canons of punishment for crime and their order of importance as follow: (1) Segregation; (2) deterrence ; (3) reformation; (4) humanity. But the tendency to overdo the humanitarian side of the punish-

mcnt of crime is very properly stressed.

The imprisonment must bo rendered disagreeable for purposes of deterrence. In the laudable call of humanity this fact is sometimes lost sight of. Suffragettes and. other., who have experienced prison life liavo writtdi in newspapers and reviews to complain of what they consider the scajidalc'.is discomforts of prison life —how tl\a heating arrangements are inadequate, tho food nasty, tho beds disagreeable. . . . After all tho produtUou.of discomfort is tho raison detre of prisons. ]f the oells wero thoroughly warmed, tho food sufficient, tho lieds comfortable, the prisoner would enjoy a lifo far superior to that of the poor 'but honest classes outside who have to drudge for their livelihood, and suffer all sorts of privation;. Why should the law-abid-ing proletariat bo mulcted in taxation to maintain anti-social blackguards in comfort,/

The tendency to regard the prison more as a reformatory than as a deterrent is fairly general. We have not escaped it in New Zealand; indeed, at the present time signs arc not lacking that we are erring overmuch in that direction. The power to reform is a good thing in a prison system, but, to quote tho opinion of Mb. Elliot: "I should rather say that that system was most successful which most effectively deterred men from going wrong at first." In discussing the different modes by which a prisoner can be placed, not only on the road to reform, but by means of which he can be made to earn his own living and make some repayment to society for the injury he has done it, Mr. Elliot puts forward his startling suggestion. Briefly, it is that criminals should be used in certain cases for purposes of scientific experimentation. •

Suppose, for instance, he writes, that a man has been convicted of a particularly brutal rape or of swindling poor people out of their life's savings;. and suppose that an important discovery towards tho cure of cancer might lie mado by inoculation experiments on living men, will any sentimentalist bo so blind to reason, so deaf to the plainest calls of humanity as to say it woull bo wrong to inoculate that criminal witi tta car-cer and maki tho observations which might be followed by untold benefit to the whele race? ... On tho one hand wo have a cuarso and hardened scoundrel, on whom wo have in. any case determined to inflict severe )}cnalties; on the other hand we have an odious and agonising disease from which 50,000 people are now said, to be suffering in England and Wales alone. Is it more normal or more humane that tiie penalties inflicted on the criminal should be penalties useless to society, rather than penalties useful to society? Can we reconcile it to our consciences to allow thousands, and thousands of our best citizens to l>e tormented and succumb to this frightful disease merely because we have not the nerve to try experiments upon one or two heartless wretches who do not deserve our slightest comjniseration?

Mr. Elliot takes it for granted that in promulgating this mode to force the criminal to make a refund to society which will be of real value, ho will .be regarded by many worthy people as a gross and brutal barbarian, but he is not deterred by this prospect. He can indeed claim that his suggestion, startling as it undoubtedly is, is not altogether new. In the reign of George I, he points out, the opinion was given by the law officers of the Crown that the King could lawfully granta pardon to a malefactor under sentence of death on the condition _ that • he should allow himself to be inoculated with smallpox. Public opinion, we imagine, will require a good deal of '•'educating" before it will be ready to adopt Mr. Elliot's suggestion. Yet it nevertheless serves _ a useful purpose in directing attention to the danger underlying the maudlin sentimentalism which is inclined, to creep into the treatment of criminals under the pleasant guise of prison reform. According to the recentlyissued Blue Book of criminal_ statistics, quoted by Mr. Elliot, it appears that the progressive diminution in crime during last century has given place to a steady increase of crime during the present century. Mr. H. B. Simpson, C.8., in his introduction to the Blue Book, says: "It is permissible to suggest that the steady increase of crime during the last ten years is largely due to a general relaxation of public sentiment with regard to it." Public sentiment plainly needs a tonic, and Me. Elliot perhaps has supplied it.