CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIV, Issue 10707, 17 July 1895, Page 2

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— Permit me to point out to your correspondent "Athenian" that he has, up to the present, failed to refute any of the arguments adduced by those in favour of the abolition of capital punishment, and that, if be wishes to be included in the “ common-sense, practical party,” from which he so kindly excludes me, he should produce what reasonable arguments he can to support his contentions. The general tenor of his last letter leads me to infer that our differences of opinion on the subject are reducible to a question of the desirableness or otherwise of the immediate abolition of this form of punishment. He evidently wishes to see that abolition postponed until the crimes which are now deemed to merit such punishment shall have become extinct. I, on the contrary, wish to see the State commence by placing a higher value on human life than is indicated by existing methods of dealing with both the criminal and non-criminal population. With " Athenian’s ” advocacy of industrial reforms I am in hearty accord, believing as I do that by far the major portion of the crimes committed nowadays are the fruit of the social and industrial system which makes it impossible for so many to maintain themselves and those dependent on them by means of honest effort. I do not advocate merely making prison life “ more pleasant,” but wish rather to sea it made more just and more permanently useful to each individual needing its correction. Neither do I maintain that prison life should be arranged principally with the object of acting aa a deterrent in the ordinary sense, since that involves terrorism, and terrorism is the weakest and most hopeless of any method that can be adopted for dealing with evildoers. The extent to which • even the most brutal prison discipline, or the infliction of the death penalty, has failed, to deter men from crime, should bo proof to any observer that totally new methods need to be tried, and I believe that those methods will be on the lines of the indeterminate sentence, coupled with prison discipline, based upon an apprehension of crime as being just as much a form of disease as are small-pox or cholera. I agree with " Athenian ” that the " State should retain the right to ring down the curtain on any player whose acting merits the disgrace,” but this does not in any sense involve & judicial murder, but merely a period of compulsory seclusion in which the poor actor shall have opportunity to re-study his part, so that he may again issue forth upon the stage of human affairs, and play his part with a better appreciation of what is required of him in the great drama that unfolds tho evolution of the race.—l am, &c., JOHN BBNDELY.