ADVOCATE OF LASH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19940, 8 May 1928, Page 12

ADVOCATE OF LASH.

AMERICAN JUDGE'S VIEWS. CRIME IN UNITED STATES. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. ] NEW YORK, April 4. Judge Marcus Kavanagh, who startled tho country three years ago by urging the abolition of the American criminal code and the adoption in its place of the English code, has now gone a step further in his book, "The Criminal and His Allies," in recommending the free use of the lash as a deterrent to crime. Judge Kavanagh states 350,000 men and women in the United States make their living wholly or partly by crime. He bases his estimate and the material in his book on the results of 33 years on the bench, and three years spent in research. These criminals, he estimates, committed 12,000 murders and took enough bo'ty to pay for the Panama Canal "Pubiic apathy, quibbling courts of review, antiquated legal processes, new means designed to protect the criminal rather than the public, and unscrupulous lawyers," are blamed for the crime record of the United States, which Judge Kavanagh terms tho most lawless and lawridden of civilised nations. The use of the lash is one of many recommendations he makes for the reduction of the crime rate. "No underworld lord may retain the respect of his followers after he has winced under tho pain of a whipping," he says. "No juvenile culprit may strut before his gang after an official spanking. The cat is feared more than a gaol sentence."

The curse of trial technicalities, for which he blames tho v Supreme Court, could bo remedied with tho following Statute of 18 words, says the Judge:— "All laws and rules of Courts, concerning forms, practice and procedure, shall be directory only and not mandatory." Ho also attacks alienists, defends the death penalty and pleads for equal punishment of men and women.

"I am sure no man may bo as good as a good woman." Judge Kavanagh remarks. "It isn't in him. And no man may be as bad as a bad woman. He hasn't the same genius for evil. A woman is always more hnrt by her fall than is a man by his fall, for the reason that a man only drops from the first storey, while tho woman tumbles from the roof."