PENAL REFORM IN NEW ZEALAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 180, 31 July 1936, Page 6

PENAL REFORM IN NEW ZEALAND

Sir, —Tlie figures supplied to your readers prove beyond doubt that our prison population, as conipared with England’s is out of all proportion. What is to be done? May we offer some suggestions:— First, let us so increase the efficiency of our police that all lawbreakers, and especially the young, are quickly brought to book. Nothing, it is now agreed, is so deterrent as swift and certain detection. Next, let us legislate, as England did last year, to abolish prison as alternative to fine, except where wilful default can be proved. Our 1936 Year Book shows that., tn 1934, no less than 946 persons were imprisoned for non-payment of fines. Let us also follow England's lead in abolishing the offence of “sleeping out.” By all means, also, let us adopt England’s check upon the declaration of habitual criminals by requiring special indictment on the charge, enabling a defence to be made, and setting a limit on the sentence. The Courts, which have already wisely begun to recognise the uses of probation with restitution in cases against property, should be encouraged to use this method more freely. There is nothing more potent than restitution in inducing in the thief the reflection that theft has not paid him, while, at the same time, nothing is more just to the victim. The evidence that our prisons are schools of crime is so strong that, for the protection of the public, we should urge that prison be used only as a last, never a first, expedient. This would mean making probation a teal, effective and reformative “treatment,” and the transformation of some of our “institutions.” In sex crimes, we urge, in every case, before sentence, thorough examination by experienced psychiatrists, of whom the Minister for Justice says we have plenty. Upon the report of the experts, the deliquent could be sent the the Colony for the Feeble-minded (there is one in existence in the South Island), to a psychopathic hospital (already foreshadowed in recent prison reports), to an inebriates’ home, or, if considered necessary, to prison. We would welcome criticism of these measures, which, we are convinced, would protect the public far better than our present system, as well as protect us from our present overload of disgrace and fruitless expenditure.—l am, etc., H. BENTHAM, Hon. Secretary