The Dominion WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1928. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 111, 8 February 1928, Page 8

The Dominion WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1928. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Mr. Justice Reed’s address to the grand jury at the opening of the Auckland Criminal Sessions was in a sense an address to the public in general and the Press in particular. From the tenor of his remarks it would appear that he was replying to public criticisms of sentences on offenders, and especially to cases where, first, the leniency of the sentence has seemed to the lay mind altogether out of proportion to the nature of the offence, and, secondly, to cases where sentences delivered for offences of equal seriousness differed markedly in the degree of their severity. His Honour admitted that it was right and proper that the sentences of a Judge should be subject to the criticism of the newspapers, but ill-informed criticism was likely to do harm amongst unthinking people, as casting doubt upon the impartiality of the Judge. It is a little unusual to find a Judge of the Supreme Court replying to criticism. A Judge may not be beyond criticism, but he usually rises superior to it. He is content to justify his decision in his address to the prisoner in open Court, which, in effect, is an address to the public. His function is not to try the prisoner before him, for that is the business of the jury, but to see that in the conduct of the trial, justice is done, and that the punishment meted out to a convicted accused is likely to react in a manner favourable to society and with due regard to its effect on the prisoner. It may seem occasionally to the public that a Judge has erred on the side of leniency, or of severity, and it may even happen that criticism of this kind has been well founded. It must always be remembered, however, that public feeling is apt to be a somewhat unreliable index of the merits of a case. Since one of the objects of punishment is to deter others, it might happen that in an epidemic of a particular class of offence, public feeling, becoming impatient with what, in its state of irritability, it regards as futile sentences, would demand sharper reprisals. If the Bench were to allow itself to be swayed by such public ebullitions, it might conceivably happen that the very next offender would receive a sentence altogether out of proportion to the circumstances of his particular case. From one point of view the Judge performs his duties in a blaze of publicity, but from another, in his private deliberations concerning the case before him, he claims and exercises a seclusion which to British ideas is eminently fitting and essential to the efficient discharge of his highly responsible office. One of the privileges of this seclusion is that he need not argue with the public. Where there is room for doubt and criticism, there is usually the recourse of an appeal. The privilege of detachment, therefore, is one that should be jealously guarded.

The Judge occasionally may err, and so, also, may the jury. Sentences have been reviewed, and verdicts have been upset. The fact that such events are possible in our judicial system is in itself some assurance that where criticism has been justified, judicial errors may be remedied. So far as our New Zealand Courts of Justice are concerned the tendency has been to err on the side of leniency. This is in harmony with the general policy of the reform rather than the punishment of offenders. That this policy at times may have been carried to extremes can hardly be disputed, but there are few indeed who would be prepared to challenge its soundness as a general principle.