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New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13625, 19 December 1907, Page 7

Attorney-General Bonaparte has Writes a San Francisco correspondent) com© out with the startling suggestion that the death penalty should be meted out to habitual criminals. The criminal law, he said in an address on the National Prison Congress, must be judged by its results to the community at large. If it diminished crime and made obedionce to the law more prompt and general, then it was a good law. Its effects on law-breakers, while worthy of note, were, he went on, of vastly less importance. Punishment failed if the criminal remained as dangerous to society after he had suffered as he was before. Then the .Attorney-General proceeded: "We have developed a class or men who pass a very large part of their adult lives in prison, ■using their .intervals of liberty only to devise and execute crimes. I would not have a man hanged for trifling theft, but I would have modern society cease to nourish and shelter its proved and inveterate enemies. When a man has been three times convicted of major crimes, he 1 suould be liable to death penalty." There-has been a deal of stimulating discussion of this almost revolutionary proposal. On the whole, the writers in the press do not seem to think that capital punishment would diminish crime of the class referred to, and the example of England in the early part of last century, when men were hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, is frequently cited as showing that Undue harshness docs not tend to check wrong-doing.