CAPITAL PUNISHMENI

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 70, 20 September 1927, Page 4

CAPITAL PUNISHMENI

FEW EXECUTIONS

PRISON COMPTROLLER'S

STATEMENTS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, Bth Sept. Those who oppose capital punishment on tho ground mainly that murder is invariably the result of some sudden passion will find food for thought in tho statement of the Comptroller-General of Prisons in New South Wales that, of those who have beon sentenced to death in the State for murder, the groat majority have been first offenders. Although capital punishment is still provrded for on the Statute Book, those who expiate their crime on tho gallows have beon few in New South Wales ainco Labour has been in power. Intorest in the subject has been revived by conjectures as to tho probable fate of tho latest of the grim band in Sydney, a young man sentenced to doath only a day or two ago for the murder of a girl which shocked tho community a month or two back. The probability is that he will bo sentenced oither to penal servitudo for life or to imprisonment for tho term of his natural life. Of the 56 or 57 men who aro in the gaols in New South Wales for capital offences, only five or six are condemned to die behind the grim prison walls, although, according to the ComptrollerGeneral, they all cling to the hope that circumstances will arise some day or other which will serve to release them before death overtakes them in bondage.

The. remaining 50 or so are undergoing penal servitude which is based, as in the insurance business, on expectation of life. If, for example, they are sentenced at the ago of, say, 20 years they have a fair prospect of a successful appeal for rolease in anothor 20 years or more. The fact that not a ( fow former prisoners, including the' worst "of them; mako a friendly call on. the Comptroller-General after their releaso says something for modern penology. Only a day or two ago, a man who spent fivo years in gaol, and who has since been restored to civil life, was among tho callers on that official, whoso formor chargo is to-day earning a salary in one of tho big city establishments which would mako the averago man envious. As for. hangings, the Comp-troller-General, although he has been 40 years in. tho service, has nover seen one, and says he hopes ho never will.