A SOCIAL PROBLEM.

Otago Witness, 14 December 1893, Page 35

A SOCIAL PROBLEM.

(By M. L.)

S. C, aged 40 ; born at Dundee, Scotland. Thirty previous convictions. Found guilty of maliciously wounding. Sentenced to two years' hard labour. So briefly runs the record of one of the cases tried in our Supreme Court at the recent criminal sessions — and the case was not a solitary one. On the same day there were two other prisoners — one a woman, the other a man — whose careers in life were of a very similar character. " The best thing we can do for the public and for you is to put you away for some time out of the way of drink." These were the words of his Honor Mr Justice Williams to both the women in turn. Aud S. C, our type, is "put away" for two years — reduced to one year and seven months in case of good conduct m gaol — aud then back to the old lite. And such a life ! The sole objecb, to obtain drink without work ; the sole means employed immoral and criminal ; the sole resulb further crime.

Does it not suggest itself to us that such a career is in itself conclusive evidence of the entire failure of our system of dealing with •'habitual criminals"? Such lives are in our body politic like gangrene in Iho bedy corporal — running sores spreading in all directions. Our last aspiriug reformers iv our own tair city are crying out on those who let dwellings to these uulortunate3. They seem to think that if everyone will only refuse to leb a house where thesu creatures can hide themselves from public gaze the evil of their existence will disappear. What is to become of them when they are turned out of Ihe last house is evidently a matter which is to be considered when it occurs. The idea of making housa room dependent on virtue is painfully ludicrous. No effort to deal with the root of the evil finds place in the programme. Bub there aie a few in our midst who are making efforts in the direction of assisting the perishing. The Women's Refuge, the Patients and Prisoners' Aid Society, and the Salvation Army Rescue Br'gade are three organisations which are doing a good work. But their scope is 1 mited. Their work is one of reformation, and tne possibility of reformation is found only amongst those who are jusb entering on the downward path. When the horror of the life first dawns on the still susceptible sinner, these bodies can and do perform a useful function. But to the mass et the clasg they can be of no service. Once this horror has beeu faced, and suicide has not claimed the victim, there comes the later stage when sin is embraced and reformation becomes impossible, because the desire for it has gone for ever. Even more, at thi3 stage not only has the desire for reformation gone, bub, bereft of all ambition, of all hope, the poor unfortunates have now become satisfied with their lot. Petty larceny is to them an everyday affair — discovery comes bub seldom, and the expiation is, after all, not so very dreadful ; and then tuere is the real pleasure of drink, when CAre is thrown to the winds^ and jollity — as they know it — is followed by insensibility, to be followed again by drink to deaden the physical pain of recovery ; and the police, to whom they are all well known, keep their debaucheries in check until the uproar becomes too great. Then lollows an appearance at the Police Court, and " Ten shillings, or 48 hours," gives them time to geb bhoroughly sober and arrive at a definite understanding, which may lasb for a week or so, that they really must be more careful when the police are around ; or perhaps when passions are roused some 1 weapon is seized in a drunken frenzy, and a charge of maliciously wounding is followed by a sentence in the Supreme Court — a Bentence based, and rightly based, not on the facts of the individual case, but on the previous character of the unfortunate who has been unlucky enough to make his trouble serious. So he serves his term and returns to hia old associates and his old life. Take all this, repeated as it actually is in many cases from year's end to year's end in the lower court, where five convictions in 12 months is not very rare, and vary ib in each decade with a two or three year's sentence in the higher court, and then talk of voluntary reformation ! Let the Ethiopian change his skin and the leopard his spots ! These things being so, and it is ostrich-like to pretend they are nob so, the question presses for solution, How can these evils be minimised by the State P An answer has not yeb been directly found, but many signs point to one answer. We have not yet reached the position of State of Erewhere, but we have discovered and acknowledged that our prison discipline is nob solely reformatory, nor solely sufficient to meet the necessities of t^e treatment of criminals. We have in our own colony placed on our Statute Book that enlightened enactment the First Offenders,' Probation Act, which has already borne good fruit, and provided a method whereby a first lapse from the straight path need not involve a life-long degradation. To keep our weak ones free from the destroying influence of our gaols, to prevent an accidental fall, so to speak, from condemning the fallen one to the hopeless contamination of the hardened criminal has been our first great step towards a rational and intelligent criminology. Again, in our Police Offences Acb, wherein we provide generally for the punishment of minor offences, we have almost shown an appreciation of the proper treatment of habitual crime. Certain persons leading loose and disorderly lives are subject as "idle and disorderly persons " to imprisonment for three months. " Idle and disorderly persons " committing certain offences, taken as evidence of a continued evil disposition, are, under the term "rogues and vagabonds," subject to imprisonment for one year, arid any "rogue or vagabond" who comes a second time within the purview of the law relating to hid class becomes, as an "incorrigible rogue," subject to imprisonment for three years. But this after all is only a groping after the true method. What is the resulb of a three years' sentence to an " incorrigible rogue "? aud what becomes of him or her after the sentence is served ? Our typo S. C. supplies us with an answer : a return to evil course-s aud an active or passive recruiting of the rauks of the class. What end, we may ask, is served by these short sentences ? The three elements of our punishments for crime are U3ually given as revenge for the offence, reformation ot the criminal, and warning example b> others. To these must be added the freeing of society from an unsocial factor. How are the«e met by our provision for incorrigible rogues ? Revenge and warning are very doubtfully provided for by bhorb terms, which serve bub to set up and strengthen the constitution of the criminal for further crime. Reformation is out of the question, because incorrigibility is the offence, and because the experience of centuries has shown that reformation 13 not obtaiued ; and the unsocial factor, unreformed, still incorrigible, is again let loose on society. Here we find the answer to our question suggesting itself, and it is by the permanent detention of the habitual criminal. At thi3 stage the elemenb of revenge would practically be omitted. The detention need not now take the form of gaol imprisonment, The

recognition of the hopelessness of reform would make the incorrigible objects of pity, ani this would be the dominating sentiment of the restraint. But the restraint would be effective and lasting. It might be that in some cases it might come to an end and provisional freedom bs again granted. Bub this would only be under special circumstances, and with special precautions. The first symptoms of relapse wou'd necessitate a permanent return. As a warning to other evildoers permanent detention would be decidedly effective, and society would be freed from the corrupting factor. Yefc, after i all, this is but a palliative method. Our habitual criminals are nob provided for us ready made. They are being made every day, and will continue to be made so long as human nature is what it is — so long as society and the individual are in conflict. Were all our S.C.s to be placed in a retreat to-day, to-morrow a fresh crop would be found to take their places. All that can be claimed for our proposed treatment ia that it would remove influences favouring the growth and development of the new crop. Even admitting that an evil is irremediable, that is no reason why its growth should be fostered, and under our present system we are fostering and encouraging the growbh of the class under review. The abolition of the incorrigible criminal is a matter beyond hope ; the reduction of his influence in educating his kind is a matter well within the scope of practical sociology.