CRIMINAL LAW.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 13 August 1923, Page 3

CRIMINAL LAW.

. _^ —. . PURPOSE OF PUNISHMENT. In dealing with the punishment of adults who transgress the social code, Mr. Ernest Mander,, in a lecture at Wanganui under the auspices of the W.E.A., said that this was of two kinds—the unofficial punishment meted out by public sentiment, and the official punishment of those who fell foul of the criminal law. The former, he sa;d, is very much the more important! "After all, the criminal law does not trouble most of vs —it is only designed for exceptional cases. Society is able to control the majority of us without recourse to threats of penal servitude and all that sort of thing. It isn't the fear of 'forty shillings or seven days' which stops me making a brawl in the public streets, it is the presence of public opinion, the fear of losing the goodwill and respect of my friends, and the influence of social tradition. "Now, our penal code comes in for a great deal of criticism —some of it fully justified, no doubt. But many of its critics lose sight of this very important fact, that it is intended only for exceptional, abnormal, cases —those who are not amenable to the pressure of public opinion. You cannot condemn j a certain punishment by reference to the effect which, it might have on you. YOll have carefully cultivated moral J habits, you value "the respect of your friends; there are many factors in"your case which do not occur in the case of ! the man who can be restrained from brawling, or being drunk and disorderly in public,.or hausebreaking, only by i the idea of a' Magistrate's Court.'' I Mr. Mander gave another classification of punishments as vindictive, deterrent, and reformative. "The vindictive punishment is one which is the outcome of anger, indignation, or vengefulness on the part of society. At the back of all such punishment is the cold notion of 'getting even' with the offender, the old craving for revenge. 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life'; it is not pretty, but it relates to something very primitive, very elemental, but very insistent in human nature. In the case of the death sentence for murder, lor example, this is clearly a relic of the old tradition. It has its roots in the now discarded tradition of private vengeance on the part of the family of the murdered man—the idea of State vengeance is only a modification of this. When a chief, a king, or any ether authority is appointed to keep order, that authority sa.ys (in eifect) to the relatives of the murdered man: Now, look here; we know that so-and-so has murdered this man, and we quite understand and sympathise with your thirst for revenge —a life tor a life. But we can't have you running about the place with a chopper looking for the murderer, making a nuisance of yourself. So leave it to us, and we'll do the job for you.' So State vengeance was substituted for private vengeance, because the latter was inconvenient to ihe community at large. But, of course,*-there are other factors in it as well—the question of ' deterrents, and the idea that by killing , on <? of its members the piurclerer is, ; committing an offence against the com- ' munity itself. But it is no mere coincidence that the death penalty is retained for murder after it has been abandoned for everything else, even for dimes which are far more serious ' than that of body-murder." I The lecturer then dealt at some j length with the use of punishment—or, rather, the threat of punishment—as a deterrent. s After examining the psychological aspect of the matter and statistics regarding the percentage of persons who, having been imprisoned once, subsequently get back to prison again, he submitted certain conclusions to his hearers. If the ptmishment was intended to deter th© prisoner himself from. | repeating his offence, the whole thing '; stood condemned as a hopeless failure. "But it is not intended to do that," Mr. Mander submitted. "When we

speak of a deterrent punishment we mean that it is designed to deter other' people from committing that offence; we are considering its probable effect upon the minds of others, and not "upon that of the criminal himself. If it were

intended primarily to deter-the prisoner from repeating his offence, the fact that so large a percentage of prisoners go back again would be its condemnation. In judging the usefulness or otherwise of a particular form of punishment we ought to bear that in mind." The last kind of punishment wight not, perhaps, to be called pi:nis .met at all. r'Tieatment'' would be a better word to use. "So far," said the lecturer, "practically nothing has been attempted in the way of individual treatment ; and if psychology makes any one point clear it is that, to get proper results, every individual case must be studied and treated separately. We cannot generalise abont criminals; there is no essentially criminal type. Each ; case must be studied and treated individually. However, that is a question for the future. There is only a limited number of persons who are competent to study aud treat these cases on proper scientific lines, and at the present time there is probably.' much more urgent work for them to do in other departments of life." Mr. Mander concluded his lecture by quoting some interesting figures concerning the relationship between crimr and physical and mental"unfitness.