POLICE ETHICS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 675, 12 February 1903, Page 20

POLICE ETHICS.

Policemen, like the members of certain other trades and professions, grow callous in respect of the “ cases ” with which they have to deal, but occasionally it gives one a little shock to find the quality of mercy unduly strained. At the Auckland Police Court, on Friday last, two women were charged with habitual drunkenness, with being persons of bad moral character, and generally on the score of vagabondage. Sad as it is to say it, one appeared to be quite incorrigible. She occasionally performs short spells of work, but for many years past she has dwelt chiefly amongst the dregs. Her, the Bench, after consideration, sent to gaol for six months, on the reasonable plea that she would be better there than amongst her usual surroundings, if only for a short period. The other woman’s record was somewhat similar, save that she had devoted longer spaces of her time to honest - work, and had been an inmate of the Salvation Army Home. One of the Sisters of the Home was in Court, and expressed her readiness to take the woman back again, so the Justices who presided agreed to give the unfortunate woman, another chance.. And here is where the peculiar manifestation of police ethics came in. Sub-Inspector Black remarked that one woman was as bad.as. the other, and he did not see why one should get six months, and the other nothing. Now, assuming that the woman is susceptible in any degree to the reforming influence, the Army Home is a better place than the gaol, but the truth is that we are, as a people, drifting into a belief that the cure for every evil is. to be found in repression. Moral suasion and the active exercise of philanthropy are giving place to prohibition orders and a clamouring for shutting up the public houses. We are seeking to cure a canker by poulticing, and merely aggravating the disease.