Inadequate Punishment

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 199, 20 May 1936, Page 5

Inadequate Punishment

Sir, —Your louder in this morning’s “Dominion” is right to the point. It is quite time this matter was taken notice of by the public. Every day some breadwinner is killed by some drunken miscreant of a motorist. 2V wife trembles in anxiety all day until she sees her loved ones home in safety each night from this menace. It i» overdue now that motorists who are a danger to the community should receive a good birching as an addition to their punishment.—l am, etc.. ROY COLEMAN. Dannevirke, Alay 19.

Sir, —I heartily endorse your remarks in this morning’s “Dominion” regarding the inadequacy of the sentence imposed iu connection with the recent Hutt Road tragedy. Iu my opinion the convicted person should bare received five years. Think of the home left desolate, the widow and her two fatherless children — the mother deprived of a son on the very verge of manhood, and giving every pro-, mise of developing into a successful business man and an asset to the community. Through the actions of a drunken person who hadn’t any right, legally, to be on the road at all—the mention of all he had gone through (mentally) since the accident won’t bring the two lives back, nor help the poor women left to mourn. No punishment is heavy’ enough for a person who is intoxicated when in charge of a car.

“Train up a child in the way he should go. and when he is old he will not depart from it” —that is, get more bands of hope.—l am, etc., ■MOTHER OF SIX. Ngahauranga. Alay 19.