The Maikato Times With which 13 Incorporated The Waikato Argus. THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 1929. THE PROBATION SYSTEM.

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17802, 29 August 1929, Page 6

The Maikato Times With which 13 Incorporated The Waikato Ar gus. THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 1929. THE PROBATION SYSTEM.

The report on “offenders’ probation" presented to Parliament is distinctly encouraging. Only 8 per cent, of those admitted to probation during the year relapsed into breaches of the law. The aim of the system is well stated in the remarks of the Field Organiser, Mr Gerald M. Silver: “As the best thought in the medical world is working to prevent disease by encouraging health, so in the probation field the attempt is on the lines of preventing vice by encouraging virtue.” Mr Silver stresses the value of the work done by voluntary helpers as well as the probation officers, and it is manifest that people of good will in private life can help young men and women (who may have gone astray chieliy through lack of the right opportunities) in certain ways that are impossible to those associated professionally with the administration of the law. Voluntary probation committees have been organised, and in most places they have functioned with great advantage. The Christian churches, Young Men’s and Young Women's Christian Associations and Rotary Clubs also have given valuable assistance. Probation permits a man or woman to remain in contact with normal social life and to grow in understanding of social obligations and tne related privileges. The disaster of imprisonment is that it removes people from the environment in which society wishes them to learn to live. The report quotes the following statement of an overseas authority on the com-

parative disadvantages of imprisonment: “The loss of earning .capacity, the loosening of family lies, the social stigma, the possibility of contamination, the weakening of morale, the difficulties of readjustment, arc evils borne not alone by the man who undergoes the imprisonment but by the rest of us, who, no matter how we try to cut ourselves loose from the criminal, suffer with him.” There is also a quotation from. a statement made by the Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Hewart) at an international conference. His Lordship believes in the deterrent effect of punishment but says: “Nothing, it goes without saying, is more injurious to the public interest than the manufacture of criminals. What is not so generally recognised is that there are few more effectual ways of manufacturing criminals than to send young offenders unnecessarily to prison, where theymay easily find themselves far more comfortable than they expected to be, where they may perhaps make acquaintance with men and methods likely to bring them to ruin, and where, after serving some short sentence of complete futility, they may abandon for ever their repugnance to prison and all that it involves. Grave, indeed, is the 'responsibility of those who, otherwise than In a case of clear necessity, send any youth or girl, or indeed any man or woman, to prison for the first time.” Here is a very strong argument for extension of the probation system. Of course, probation which simply consists of a perfunctory periodical visit to the police station—as was the case till recently in New Zealand —is valueless. What Lord Hewart was advocating was such a system as would enable the young person, after a slip, “to reinsta’e his character by his own efforts, aided by the sympathy and experience of the probation officer” one might add, “and the encouragement and help of others.” Given such a system, our Judges and Magistrates would, doubtless, make far greater use of probation than hitherto.