PUBLIC OFFENCES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11541, 28 November 1900, Page 7

PUBLIC OFFENCES.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir.—A few days ago 1 noticed a paragraph in a Southern newspaper commenting on tho different ways in which the Bench of our Police Courts treated such cases as obscene language and behaviour in publio places (and which so grossly outrage all sense ot public decency, such being often done within sight and hearing of females and children), compared with the penalties inflicted on persons who may commit a very faint and merely technical breach of some law, which in no sense is an offenoe to public morals or good order. The same reflections, I think, also apply to our local courts, as on several occasions cases of grossly obscene language and behaviour committed in public places have been treated, as I think, more leniently than the law designs. The Legislature, in its determination to purify the language used and behaviour on our public streets, has decided that the persons offending shall be imprisoned as the penalty to bo inflicted, and the Bench of the Police Courts has, I think, undertaken a very serious course in adopting the precedent of generally only recording a conviction and dismissing the person oharged.— am, etc., ' Observer.