OUR CRIMINAL POPULATION.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 1929, 12 July 1869, Page 3

OUR CRIMINAL POPULATION.

In addressing the Grand Jury of Nelson, on the opening of the July assizes at that town, Judge Richmond made the following observations : —He referred to the light nature of the present calendar, which he said was the lightest he ever had before him during the seven years he had sat as a Judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand. Not only were the cases few, but the offences were of a very light character, and there was not one of violence. He should wish to see calendar’s of this kind of more frequent With regard to dealing with the criminal classes, he could not but think that if once the Australasian population were fairlv aroused to the necessity for dealing in a combined manner with the question of how best to dispose of the larger criminals, a successful method could be adopted in a quarter of the world possessing such facilities for absorbing the criminal population. When facilities are so great for an honest man getting honest labor, there ought to be a greater readiness for a successful coping with crime. The subject is now attracting great attention, and it is fairly being taken hold of in England, where it is much more difficult to deal with than it is in this Colony. The Judges of the Supreme Court here are in the habit of directing the attention of the Grand Juries in order to keep it before the country. There was a clear necessity for taking the subject up, and for dealing with different classes of criminals in a totally different manner. The punishment of a habitual criminal should be a different thin" from that given t© a casual criminal. ° The former is a hopeless servant of sin and Satan, and _ has forfeited his liberty. He is a slave already to vicious habits, and he cannot be delivered from that condition of lost liberty which he has forfeited. The condition of these habitual criminals is such as to justify the State in taking from them the liberty they themselves have lost. The State is justified in taking his liberty from such a criminal, him under a certain wholesome discipline for life, and so preventing him from pursuing his evil courses. He advocated long punishments for such men, extending for a long time even for minor offences, when it shall have been proved that they are habitual criminals, to the extent of a modified servitude for life. But our gaols were not suited for this kind of servitude. It would be cruelty to place such men there, with their present accommodation ) there is a want of facility for the system : the confines of our prisons are too limited. It was not right either to put small and casual oftenders in the same category with habitual criminals, nor to treat them in the same way. For a casual offender, one not accustomed to crime, the punishment should be short and sharp, so that he might be warned from repetition of offences. But with the habitual criminal it was different. He was already the bond slave of crime, and he should be made to undergo servitude for life under the State. It follows that the discipline and treatment of long servitude men must be rather milder than those of short servitude offenders. Wc must not deprive the criminal, immured for life it may be, of all hope or opening for a somewhat better condition; — of ameliorating his state, and of rising in the scale even of criminals. We find him unfitted for the world without, but within the precincts of tire gaol he ought to have some means of working out some improvement. Humanity and religion alike debarred us from depriving him of all hope for bettering his condition, even if it were only within the prison ; and he therefore advocated a sj r stem of treatment of such criminals by means of rewards and punishments. These views demonstrated that no prison establishment we have, or were likely to have in this Colony, would suffice to carry out the system of prison discipline here set forth. The subject was spoken of in the report of a commission on the state of our prisons, of which he (the Judge) was a member ; but from the poverty of the Colony and the many burdens it had to bear, he did not think they could establish a right system of good discipline, s'uch as that alluded to. The Commission recommended the employment of some of the criminals in tly; hulks, simply as a pis oiler, a mere expedient for something better than the system now existing. For example, it was impossible to carry out such a system in the prisons of Invercargill, Picton, or even that of Nelson, and there were worse prisons than any of those he had named ; it was found totally impossible to effect the desired end in prisons so small. The poverty of the Colony rendered the hope of a remedy in the Colony itself very distant, and he just wished to throw out a suggestion

by which, to a certain extent, the object might be met. The Government of New Zealand propose having a Conference with the Australian Colonies on several subjects j and one good result of that Conference would be the ascertainment of the views of all the Australian Colonics on the subject ot a combined action in dealing with criminal population. What would give tais Colony a fair basis for asking to receive from us our long sentence criminals, is partly the fact that many of them come and go between the Colonies. Of course there must be an advantage to the Colony receiving such criminals. It would be a good thing for us if we could send our long and life sentence criminals to Pentridge. In fact, it would be cheap if we paid L2OO a year for each of the criminals so sent. The remarks he had made were intended to draw attention to a subject daily growing in importance. He had said that the calendar for the session was light, and it might be asked—Why refer to the subject in such circumstances'! Tiie question, however, was being discussed at Home, and it was always wise to consider such subjects here at such a time, so that we might get the advantage of the full discussion going on otherwise.