Criminal Problem

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 153, 25 March 1938, Page 13

Criminal Problem

Sir, —In the interesting column that appeared under'the above heading in your issue of March 19, there is one old mistake that I would beg leave to gainsay. - Flogging never “wiped away the garrotter.” On the contrary, “garrotting had been put down before the flogging Act was passed,” said Sir Farrer Hersehell. himself once Solicitor-General, speaking in the House, of Commons. “Garrotting was put down without the lash,” said Mr. Asquith in 1900, speaking in the same place, and the then Home .Secretary confirmed his statement.

As regards “terrorisation,” tried already so often in the long history of penal policy, may I quote still another "author” on its effects after application in our own Dunedin prison, last century? “It is on record that two well-known criminals, on leaving . . . swore that they’d take a life for every lasli ami indignity laid upon them, and how well they are keeping their oath is well known.” So much for “terrorisation” as a protection for the public! Yet another much more recent “author” has lately suggested, as a modern expedient, - “No prisons—but hospitals for the cure of crime, homes for the incurably incompetent, and colonies for the unsolved problems/’--—I am, etc. B. E. BAUGHAN Akaroa, March 23-. ■