CRIME AND CRIMINALS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8964, 23 August 1892, Page 3

CRIME AND CRIMINALS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—After a career of crime, varied by terms of imprisonment and some spasmodic efforts to earn an honest living, the unhappy man Plummer has been shot dead. His sad end suggests some painful reflections. In the first place, our methods of dealing with crime and criminals seem to need revision. These methods are themselves the outcome of confused or mistaken notions as to the causes of crime, and the capacity of the criminal proper for moral conduct. We suppose him to be able _ to understand and appreciate the prudential motives which govern the conduct of the normal citizen. To make matters worse, we do not aim definitely at the reformation of the criminal, and adjust our prison discipline to this end. Yet, the reformation of the criminal, who is not under sentence of life-long imprisonment, is the chief safeguard of society. The best opinion of the age condemns merely retributive punishments. Imprisonment there must be for the protection of society. But, in the interests of society, it is also necessary to reform the prisoner, and put him in the way of becoming a well-behaved citizen. Speaking of the Elmira Reformatory, Mr. Brockway says : —" During the sixteen years of its existence I have personally examined every prisoner admitted, amounting to considerably more than five thousand, with increasing charitableness for their crimes. The impression deepens that a man's character is not altogether a matter of his own free choice: .it is formed by -myriad influences. prenatal and otherwise, largely beyond his control; and besides, the responsibility of society for crimes is by no means inconsiderable. Sixty-six per cent, of the prisoners examined furnish evidence of excessive physical degeneracy ; 75 per cent, were on admission grossly ignorant, practically illiterate; 78 per cent, seemingly obtuse, that is to say, not ordinarily sensitive to either the disgrace or the privations and prospective embarrassments of their crime and imprisonment, a fact possibly sufficiently accounted for in that 95 per cent, arose from _ positively bad or habitually not good associations, out of conditions in society which society itself should not permit to exist."— etc., Zetetes.