PSYCHOLOGY AND CRIME

Southland Times, Issue 23817, 15 May 1939, Page 4

PSYCHOLOGY AND CRIME

To The Editor Sir, —England has of late far outdistanced New Zealand in penal reform. Her Money Payments Act 1935 abolishes all imprisonment through inability to pay a fine; New Zealand still imprisons for poverty. The new Criminal Justice Bill in England provides for far-reaching changes in the more rational treatment of “persistent offenders”; New Zealand’s treatment of a similar type of offender belongs to the dark ages. Now England has made one further great advance. After four years' careful investigation, she is recommending what this league has been advocating for 10 years—a special institution for the psychological treatment of certain law-breakers. As The Times, London, points out, such an institution will protect the public by providing for the observation and investigation of offenders as well as for their treatment. The individual, too, will at last receive adequate help. Such an institution will provide special training, treatment by psychotherapy, and a special colony for offenders too abnormal for social life, though not insane. Had we, during the last 10 years, had one such institution in place of one of our ordinary prisons, what an immense amount of wrong-doing, misery, and loss, the public would have been saved—and how much useless expense might have been saved. Is it not time for a humanitarian Government to take some action along these lines.—Yours, etc., NEW ZEALAND HOWARD LEAGUE FOR PENAL REFORM. May 8, 1939.