BIG DIFFERENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 149, 21 December 1926, Page 10

BIG DIFFERENCE

OPINIONS OF JUDGE AND BOARD

EDITORIAL COMMENT ON PRISONS

BEPORT.

(By Ttlegraph.) (SpMiil to "The Evuiinf P«t.")

AUCKLAND, This Day.

In the course of a lengthy editorial on the treatment of Baume/ Mackay, and Baker by ,the Prisons Board, the "New Zealand Herald" says:—"The three cases cited are said by the board to have been the target of ill-informed criticism. With the official statement available that answer cannot be made to the comment. The most striking feature of .two •of them is the very short time which elapsed between the sentence and the release. When a sentence has been one of years and the term served is only a few months, it seems that the board entertains an opinion about the need for reformative treatment very widely different from that heldby the presiding Judge. If the board acts too soon, it exercises the functions of a Court o£ Criminal Appeal, with the power to revise sentences, rather than.those it is supposed to exercise. Can a few months of good conductj can observations on character and disposition in , that brief time, serve, as a sufficient set-off to 'the undoubted commission of an indictable offencet

"The other feature . emphasised by the board 4s: the availability of friends and relatives to care for those released. This is important, but if allowed to sway decision ■ too much it creates a distinction acting to the prejudice, comparatively, of those who are not so happily " endowed. Also it opens the way for the board to be bombarded from the very day the sentence is passed with arguments for its revision. The idea that imprisonment or detention should be wholly punitive is passing,, but it may still be disciplinary. If too easily, exchanged for the indulgent oversight of relatives who can, provide congenial occupation,, it may cease to be that. ■ These are the conclusions reasonably suggested by both the general and the particular statements of the Prisons Board."