PUNISHMENT OF CRIME

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3277, 26 March 1931, Page 8

PUNISHMENT OF CRIME

"NOT FOR THE LAW." SPECIALISTS SUGGESTED. Expressing the opinion that legal education to-day did not qualify a man to be the best judge of punishment, Professor T. A. Hunter, of Victoria University, in an address on Tuesday to the Wellington branch of "the New Zealand Howard League for Penal Reform, suggested that punishment should be taken out of the hands of the law and given to the adjudication of a body of sociologists, educationists and psychologists, who had studied the complexity of human .nature. . ■■■' "'Law is mainly a tradition," said Professor Hunter. "The lawyer looks with his face to the past. Scientific ■principles and scientific methods have .never been applied to the solution of some of these fundamental problems of our social life, and I believe that as long as we have them in the hands of lawyers those principles Will never be applied to : those problems." NEED FOR RESEARCH.

Legal education of to-day did not .qualify a man to be the best judge as to, the type, conditions and forms of punishments in dealing with delinquents. That was not part of the . education at all. He pick;ed it up.as he went along, but that / was : all. , The problem was one to which psychology, education and sociology would have to contribute. One t ofithe greatest reforms that could * be made would be to take punishments out of the hands of the law. Let the law find a man p-uilty, or not : guilty, but the actual award of punishment should be in the hands of .those who had looked into the merits of the case. , We were probably not ready for that to-day, because the information was not to hand, so that : further .research would have to be carried -out. j ■"-. - • Professor Hunter suggested that '■'■(■ one of, the ways in which the Howard -Reform League could contribute to the solution of such problems was to f* set up a committee in order to investigate the whole problem of punishment ;by dealing with individual cases. If prisoners were conferred with the ; precise effect of punishments received could be ascertained. ,•- Much that was cruel in punishment had marked the development of huv man life. Certain systems and ideas : had come to be looked upon as inevitable, and sometimes as perfect. That ; was true of the past and also of the i present. There could be no doubt that our'successors in New Zealand years hence would look tfack and wonder at the stupidity and >•' cruelty of to-day. The essential bas- ' • .is"of[success in punishment was to •realise; that just as drought, disaster, earthquake, and flood came from natural causes, so did man's inhuman- :' i ity to man flow from certain social • and psychological conditions. Society : - was beginning to believe that much ;• of its crime was the result of its own action. Much of modern punishment produced exactly the opposite effect to that' which was desired. The problem of to-day was the complexity of human nature, and a great deal more research would have to be done.