NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY Registered for transmisson through the post as a newspaper. FRIDAY, JULY 10, 1925. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Northern Advocate, 10 July 1925, Page 4

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY Registered for transmisson through the post as a newspaper. FRIDAY, JULY 10, 1925. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

j There is much debate in Australia I over capital punishment, and for the most part the advocates of its abolition seem to hold sway. The number of crimes of violence committed in that country is large, especially in New. South Wales, yet the death sentence is almost invariably commuted. The new Government of New South Wales has announced its intention to introduce a measure providing for the abolition of the extreme j penalty, and as this is a plank irt the Labour platform the measure may pass. There is, however, room for . wide and legitimate differences of opinion on the subject. Some people hold very strongly that in cer- j tain cases death Is the only adequate j penalty, while others contend that in no circumstances is man justified in depriving a fellow-creature of his life. Perhaps the advocates of abolition are. too readily swayed by sentimentalisip. Is not sympathy but wasted upon the criminal who incurs the death sentences? He spared no sympathy for I his victim, nor did he exhibit any regard for the sanctity of human life, which, are are told, should preclude the infliction of the extreme penalty. When Talleyrand was asked whether he was in favour of the abolition of capital punishment he replied: "Yes; but let the assassins make the beginning." It is claimed that society has no right to,take away what it cannot restore.; If a person serving a sentence of imprison me"nt should be. found to be innocent he could be released and compensated, but if he were dead' no reparation could be made. Theref ore; the- death'penalty should be abolished. If this argument were carried to its logical conclusion we should not eveji send a man to gaol, lest it should be found later that he was innocent. ( We cannot give back the years a man has spent in gaol; no compensation can make them good. Under the jury system, howevdr, tiiere is little danger of the innocent suffering unjustly. Careful attention is paid to the axiom I of British law that it is better for a hundred guilty persons to go unpunished than for one innocent person to j suffer. Punishment has three aspects.

It may be vindictive, reformative, or deterrent. Its aim may be to visit the offender with retribution, to make him mend his ways, or, by showing i that the evildoer must pay the appointed penalty, to restrain him and others from the commission of similar offences. Vindictive punishment is out of date, and capital punishment, of course, is not reformative. As to its' deterrent value opinions differ, but students of criminology are emphatic in their contention that the fear of death does restrain criminals. Sir Harry Poland, for many years Senior Prosecutor at the Central Criminal Court in London, insists that no one who has had any experience of the working of the criminal lawcan doubt that the fear of death is a very strong restraining influence. In the absence of capital punishment, an armed burglar, caught by the householder, would be more inclined to shoot. He might escape, and at the worst it would only mean the I addition of a further term of years to his sentence. There is a strong case in favour of the retention of the ex--1 treme penalty, a ease which its opponents, though they make a humanitarian appeal, must find it difficult to answer.