CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 295, 10 September 1941, Page 6

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

It is to be hoped that Parliament will consider very carefully the possibilities and risks attached to the abolition of both capital and corporal punishment as proposed in the Bill now before it. Inis is particularly a measure upon which expert opinion should be sought; and respected. The views of Mr. Justice Reed, published in a letter todav, are therefore most timely and instructive. The writer has had 17 years’ service on the New Zealand Supreme Court Bench, a period which included eight years as president of the Prisons Board, lhe criticism he has to offer therefore carries the weight and authority or ripe judicial experience, and is deserving of most serious attention and reflection. Of particular importance are his observations on the brutal assault on the Auckland prison warders, and on sexual offences against young children. These cautionary remarks emphasize the risks to which 'the community may be exposed by the removal ot those deterrents which in the past have imposed a salutaiy check on the increase of crimes of violence. This is so clearly, so urgently, a question upon which expert opinion would have been of the utmost value in the interests of the public safety that the best legal authorities in the country should have been consulted before such a measure was brought forward. Mr. Justice Reed himself has offered advice that was rejected. The Government, unfortunately, has shown itself stubbornly and persistency averse to accepting any advice of experienced and trained minds that may be in conflict with its own preconceived ideas. A classic example is its obstinate refusal to listen to the practical wisdom and counsel of the Medical Association on the question oi the free practitionei service, an attitude which has now resolved itself into an attempt to coerce the profession into the acceptance of its own scheme.