Evening Post. MONDAY JUNE 13, 1927. A BENEVOLENT ACT & PUBLIC MORALS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 136, 13 June 1927, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY JUNE 13, 1927. A BENEVOLENT ACT & PUBLIC MORALS

Dealing on Friday with the misappriation of motor-cars and the demand for severer treatment-of offenders found guilty of non-fraudulent conversion, we suggested that the failure of the present law to deter offences of this kind might he due as much to am inadequate administration as to the inadequacy of the law .itself.' The suggestion was also made that, whether the law is changed or not, a clearer recognition of the gravity of these offences will have to.be shown by the Bench, or their number will continue to grow at a rate- which is already alarming. When,a man speaks of the legal penalty for an offence it is the maximum penalty that he is thinking of, and though there, are cases in which a minimum penalty is also prescribed it cannot be seriously argued that anything would be gained by putting these offences in that class. Exactly the same considerations which demand that a Magistrate shall he given a .wide.discretion izi the general run of cases applies against limiting it here. There is more to be said for educating the Magistrates to exercise their discretion more wisely than for. a rigid limitation or for expecting any great result from the automatic operation of a drastic change in the law. Mf the. maximum penalty for the misappropriation of a car which falls short of theft were six months' imprisonment instead of three, it would still be open to the Magistrate to dismiss the offender with a lecture. If, on the other hand, in, say, half-a-dozen serious cases the present maximum penalty were imposed, the idea that the offence is a venial one and that the law is inadequate would' receive a severe shake. Does not this show that it is the Magistrates rather, than the law that need keying up?

As we argued in our previous article, the history of the criminal law provides no support for the belief that a mere increase of the legal penalties will operate as a deterrent to crime. A code which was too barbarous for a not very squeamish age was so softened in its application as to defeat its own ends, and in due course less extravagant penalties were found to produce far belter results. At the present day there is no similar conflict between the general provisions of the criminal law and public opinion. For a generation or more the substance both of the Criminal Code and of the Police Offences Act has undergone no radical change. The principal alterations have been in the humanitarian direction, and while their spirit has been generally approved the only doubt now is whether in the administration this spirit has not been carried so far as to weaken unduly the deterrent effect of the law. This recent tendency strengthens one's doubt as to the efficacy of a mere tightening of the law to check the offence in question. It is forty years since a First Offenders Probation Act was firsl passed in this country, and nobody questions the general beneficence of its operation. But a very wide extension Avas given to the principle in 1920 by the passing of the Offenders Probation Act which was expressly made applicable to "any offence punishable by imprisonment, whether on indictment or otherwise." Under this Act persons convicted of serious offences have been' admitted to probation, and the question is being asked whether the process is not being carried too far. In an Auckland case the late Sir John Salmond refused to grant probation in a case of theft and forgery, but he was overruled by the Court of Appeal. In granting probation in a subsequent case the same Judge said that the effect of the Court of Appeal's ruling seemed to be that under the Act of 1920 a man could commit one crime with impunity, and the idea of "one man, one crime" excited a good deal of uneasiness. But the ruling of course stands, and it has been widely applied. In a Gisborne case probation was recently granted to a man who had stolen sheep valued at £150—an offence for which he was liable to 14 years' imprisonment with hard labour. In Dunedin one of two men who were convicted of stealing "several cars:' was given a month's imprisonment and the other was admitted to probation. _ Wellington and Auckland have supplied similar cases, one of the most striking being the admission to probation of a man who, with four previous convictions against him, had been guilty of indecent exposure. What effect is this very generous interpretation of a benevolent Act having upon the public morals? Statistics are tricky things to build upon, because they cover without explanation the concurrent operation of a variety of causes, but that the prison population has increased during the last six years while the number of persons admitted to probation has been more then trebled is beyond question. In the year 1918-19 the daily average number of prisoners was 981.5; in 1925-26 it was 1324.25. The trickiness of statistics to which we have referred is well illustrated by the fact that the figures for 1925----26 were increased by 60.52 through the imprisonment of seamen on strike, but after the necessary deduction there is still an unpleasantly large margin. The proportion of persons imprisoned after conviction per 10,000 of mean population pro-

vides another test. Before 1921 there had been a fairly uniform decline in this proportion, but from that year onwards there has been a steady rise. In 1920 the proportion was 15.74----in 1925 it was 20.88. But the full story is not told until the probation figures are brought into the reckoning. In 1920, 264 persons were granted probation; in 1925, the number was 653, to which 102 must be added to represent those who were given the benefit of the "deferred sentence" provision of the 1920 Act, making a total of ,760. We are fully aware of the disturbing effect of the War on the statistics of the last thirteen years, but the tendency during the years following 1920 is nevertheless disturbing.