EFFECT OF “THE CAT”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23704, 11 January 1939, Page 11

EFFECT OF “THE CAT”

“STRONG DETERRENT” JUDGE’S DEFENCE A CALLOUS ATTACK (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, Dec. 15. For the second time within a few days a judge on Assize imposed a sentence of flogging for robbery with violence, and urged its value as a strong deterrent to crimes of this sort. The Criminal Justice Bill now before the House of Commons proposes the abolition of flogging except for certain prison offences. Sentencing a man to 15 lashes of the "cat” and three years’ penal servitude for robbery with violence, Mr Justice Hilberv, at Swansea Assizes, said: “ Where a man who commits a crime is publicly convicted it should always be borne in mind that there are considerations other than those which are expedient for the prisoner. Of paramount importance is the interest in the prevention of crime and the protection of all law-abiding citizens. "A sentence which provides reformative treatment where there is a prospect. or even a hope, of it proving successful mav well be the best thing in the long rim for both the country and the individual prisoner, if it is successful. But it is not always right that a sentence should be designed for reformative treatment. There are cases which call for a punitive sentence. “Adjunct of Justice ” “ It is still necessary for the common good for punishment which is stark to be visited on some offenders. It is for this reason that judges at present have powers circumscribed by Act of Parliament to award punishment which involves the wrong-doer in degradation, distress, and even physical suffering incidental to flogging. “ There are not a few, as every judge who has travelled the Assize knows, who commit crime so brutal and who are beyond any form of reformative treatment that need such punishment in its full severity, and those punishments are still the necessary adjunct of justice.”

The sentenced man was Edward Hughes, aged 30, a hawker, of Neath, Glamorgan, who was alleged to have attacked a drunken seaman and robbed him of £2O. It was stated that the seaman, John Prunty, remembered nothing after an argument with Hughes until he found himself at 1.30 in the morning standing waist deep in mud and water with the tide rising rapidly around him. “Cat” Sentence Appeal Thomas Frederick Donovan, aged 24, a kinema operator, of Edgbaston, Birmingham, who was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude and 12 strokes of the “cat” by Mr Justice Oliver at Birmingham Assizes last week, is to appeal against the sentence. Donovan was found guilty of the robbery with violence and assault of a 29-years-old domestic servant. Imposing the sentence, Mr Justice Oliver said: “ I have yet to meet anyone with judicial experience of crime ‘who does not feel that the best type of weapon to be used against this type of offence is that of flogging.” Sentences Not Lightly Awarded No doubt the serious and considered opinions of judges, with a long experience in the administration of criminal law, will be laid before the Home Secretary and his advisers (comments the Evening News). These sentences are not lightly awarded, and no one can accuse the present Bench of judges of lack of an humanitarian outlook. It is their belief that flogging does act as a real warn in" to would-be ruffians against cowardly forms of violence. That is a belief which, before the Bill becomes law, should receive a respectful hearing. The Daily Herald questions “cures by the cat,” remarking: “ Since Mr Justice Hilbery's pronouncement is not the first of its kind, and probably will not be the last, it is worth recalling that the Departmental Committee was led to condemn flogging after the most detailed examination of the subsequent

records of men who were flogged and those who were not. They found that in no respect was the record of the flogged men better, and that in most cases it was worse. “They took every one of the frequently quoted instances of the value of flogging, and In each of them they found nothing that a man of scientific mind would regard as convincing or even suggestive. Indeed, here again the balance of the.evidence was that flogging only made matters worse." “Sloppiness” with Child Criminals Mrs Norman Ridglcy, formerly Miss Ishbel MacDonald, speaking at a meeting of the Slough School Parents’ Association on child welfare, said: “ Magistrates are sometimes too sentimental in dealing with young criminals. They do not need a sloppy treatment, and I feel that some magistrates spend too much time thinking, ‘Are we hurting the little dears? ’ The children are sometimes just laughing behind their backs.”