INDETERMINATE SENTENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13114, 1 March 1906, Page 4

INDETERMINATE SENTENCE.

The indeterminate sentence is the obvious and inevitable remedy for the state of affairs existing in Auckland at the present time, when a mere handful of criminals is rendering the entire community of honest householders uneasy, none knowing where burglary will next be encountered. : It is easy to blame the police, and demand what they are doing, but our Auckland force is quite inadequate for its regular duties, and consequently unable to make any very special efforts against exceptional lawbreaking. Sooner or later, however, the police will arrest the members of the gang or gangs now "operating" in Auckland, and will secure convictions against them. What will follow? These professional criminals will be locked up at Mount Eden for a year or two, and then released to renew their lawless raids upon law-abiding citizens. The system is too ridiculous to discuss, and must vanish the moment the public is tired of the existing farcical method. Unduly severe sentences defeat their end, and wherever there is any reasonable expectation that an offender will return to an honest way of living, which is, geneally speaking, when crime has been a mere incidence in his life, and has not been adopted as an occupation,too' great leniency can hardly be shown. But when a man has become a professional criminal, the indeterminate sentence is the only intelligent one. He should be locked up until he exhibits a satisfactory intention to reform, and then should only be released to have the opportunity. It has been doubted whether this system would work well in this colony, but our judges generally advocate it, and it cannot possibly be worse than the present game of hide-and-seek between police and criminals, wherein the latter are perpetually being released after capture, to begin the game over again.