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New Zealand Mail, Issue 772, 17 December 1886, Page 22

—r ; Among the measures passed by Parliament last session few, if any, were the subjects of warmer praise than the First Offenders Probation Act, introduced by the present Minister of -Justice, Mr Tole. It was lauded as a most humane and philanthropic effort to save those who were on the brink of the terrible precipice, to give them one more chance ; to pluck them back, as it were, by the coat-tails just as they were on the eve of plunging headlong into the black abyss of habitual crime. Many there were that believed, but some doubted. Since the Act has been in operation the doubters have multiplied, while many believers have fallen away. All sorts of objections have been taken to the Act; all sorts of faults, follies, and failures have been found to swarm in its provisions. It is condemned as supererogatory, because Judges couM have given prisoners “ another chance ” without applying to its enactments for permission, by simply binding them to come up for judgment when called on. The possibility —discovered by some ingenious minds —of its application in the case of certain grave offences has alarmed the law-abiding public, and the recent very glaring inequality in the treatment of the two post-office robbers has given fresh occasion for the enemy to blaspheme—this being, of course, put down wholly to the account of this obnoxious law. A demand is set up for ite prompt repeal as a hopeless mistake and nuisance. But is ail this unqualified condemnation quite just or wellfounded ? May not the alleged

miscarriage of justice under its provisions have been due quite as much to the " personal equation ” of Judges as were certain infinitely grosser miscarriages in Wellington lately to a like eccentricity on the part of juries ? It would scarcely he logical to conclude because certain jurymen made fools of themselves (or were made fools of—it matters not which) that therefore the system of trial by jury is a mistake and a failure, instead of being the boasted bulwark of our liberties—perhaps a little overrated. We cannot think it was ever intended that the ,provisions of the Act should apply to so peculiarly heinous a crime as that of robbery of Her Majesty’s mails, or that any doubt should exist as to their applicability to such an offence as indecent assault. That such doubts should have been raised seems to us attributable rather to judicial idiosyncracies than to any defect in the Act itself. We should have thought that the clause excluding from the operation of the Act persons guilty of offences “ attended by irreparable or serious consequences V would be enough to dispel anysuch doubts. Surely Post Office robberies and gross assaults upon females are offences involving consequences of the most serious character. But apart from this, the empowering clause is not mandatory, but purely permissive. “ The Court may direct ” that the prisoner shall be planed upon probation. The whole matter rests with the discretion of the Judges. They are hut human beings, and so are liable to err, but we cannot see that they are more liable to human error in administering the First Offenders Probation Act than in determining the punishments to be awarded to offenders under any other Ant. It is notorious that Judges differ widely in their estimate of the amount of chastisement that is due for particular offences. One prisoner may be let off with a mere nominal sentence while another convicted of a precisely similar crime may receive from a different Judge a sentence almpst ferocious in its severity. Personal idiosyncrasy cannot be eliminated from judicial administration, but the First Offenders Probation Act offers no more specially favourable field for its operation than any other law which has to be administered bv our Judges. -