CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19742, 15 September 1927, Page 13

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

NEW SOUTH WALES CRIMES.

VERY FEW EXECUTIONS

[from our own correspondent.] SYDNEY, September 8. Those who oppose capital punishment on the ground mainly that murder is invariably the result of some sudden passion, will find food for thought in the statement of the Comptroller General of Prisons in New Souh Wales that, of those who have been sentenced to death in the States for murder, the great majority have been first offenders. Although capital punishment is still provided for on the Statute Rook, those who expiate their crime on the gallows have been few in New South Wales since Labour has been hi power. Interest in tho subject has been revived by conjectures as to the probable fate oi the latest of the grim band in Sydney, a young man sentenced to death only a day or two ago for the murder of a girl which shocked the community a month or two back. The probability is that he will be sentenced either to penal servitude for life or to imprisonment for the term of his natural life. Of the 56 or 57 men who are in thp gaols in New South Wales for capital offences, onlv five or six are condemned to die behind the grim walls, although, according to the Comptroller General, they all cling to the hope that circumstances will arise some day or other which wili serve to release them before death overtakes them m bondage. The remaining 50 or so are undergoing penal servitude which is based, as in the insurance business, on expectation of life. If, for example, they are sentence! at the ace of, say, 20 years, they have a fair prospect of a successful appeal for release in another 3) years or more. The fact that not a few former prisoner including the worst of them, make a* friendly call on the Comptroller Genera? after their release says something for modern nenology. Only a day or two 3 go a man who spent five years m gaol. TC.d who has since been restored to civil life, was among the callers on that official, whose former charge is to-day earning a salarv in one of the bie citv establishments 'which would make the average man envious. As for hangings, the Comptroller General, although he has been 40 years in the service, says he has i never seen one, and that be hopes he never 1 will.