PROBATION AND CRIME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17275, 26 September 1919, Page 6

PROBATION AND CRIME.

SUCCESSFUL DETERRENT. REPORT BY REV. F. R. JEFFREYS. [BY TELEGRAPH. SPECIAL REPORTER.^ WELLINGTON, Thursday. The annual report submitted by the Rev. F. R. Jeffreys, probation officer at Auckland, says:—"lt stands to reason that much prison work is of an unproductive nature for the State. Further, another important factor is that restitution to. aggrieved persons becomes practically impossible. As compared with this, probation saves the State from the maintenance, care, and supervision of the delinquent, the Charitable Aid Board is saved from maintaining the man's family, the aggrieved person has his loss made good, and the community has the man's services in some necessarv work that makes for its efficiency. " From the moral viewpoint I know of nothing more that can humanly be done that will check a young man from a life of crime than to make him -work and maintain his family, discharge his social obligations, and out of his own hardearned money recompense the person be has wronged. " Enforced restitution from a young man's own earnings has an infinite! v ereater moral effect for good than caol--11- _ feeding, and lodging him without causing any individual rsponsibility for his maintenance.

" It is because of the scores of concrete illustrations of the benefits of probation that I have before me now that I long to see the general principles of probation more widely applied in the administration of justice in our Dominion."