JUDGES DISAGREE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 170572, 4 August 1921, Page 2

JUDGES DISAGREE.

WHAT IS PROBATION? Per Preas Association. AUCKLAND, August 3. Several prisoners appeared at the Supreme Court for sentence before Mr Justice Adams, and in granting probation to a forger, His Honour took occasion to express his views on the meaning of probation, and also in another case to refer incidentally to the Court of Appeal’s recent decision in regard to the “standard of punishment." “The Court of Appeal,” said His Honour, “did not in fact lay down any new principle. The application of the principlo has been in practice tor 20 years.-’ “Probation,’ said His Honour at' a later stage, “is not' a license to do wrong, nor is it very desirable to differentiate it from punishment. In actual fact, it is itself, in my judgment, a somewhat serious punishment. A prisoner put on probation must understand that he must he exceedingly careful to comply implicitly with the directions of the "probation officer, and with the conditions laid down in the 1920 Act.”

[On Monday at Auckland Supreme Court Mr Justice Salmond took exception to the Appeal Court’s decision, by which the sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment on a forger was reduced to probation: According to this decision, ho said, any man was entitled to commit one theft or one forgery with safety and remain at liberty. The doctrine was unsound and dangerous j