THE 1936 PENAL REPORTS.

Evening Star, Issue 22455, 28 September 1936, Page 14

THE 1936 PENAL REPORTS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —These reports (Prisons,_ Probation, and Prison Board) contain some cheering features. Serious crime is slight, the courts continue to send fewer offenders to prison, and the daily average, both there and in borstals, has fallen. At one prison there has been some scientific help, and there are three more civilian probation officers. On the other hand, New Zealand continues to be disgraced by a xienal policy which, despite departmental complacency, is evidently mainly punitive instead of reformative. Our courts still imprison too freely and for too long, so that our daily figures of disgrace are, on a population basis, some three times as many as those of England (without any corresponding better behaviour). What would the English people do if their courts were to burden them with 2,500 so-called “ habitual criminals ” ? Of these, New Zealand has almost 100, and the punitive conceptions that rule our authorities are clearly shown in the shocking suggestion, made in the prisons report, that to these should be added, as “ habitual offenders,” a whole host of weaklings who commit nuisances rather than crimes, and with whom imprisonment has failed, been retried, and failed again. Will putting in the corner ever cure a cripple of stumbling? Prison is not the place for them, as wiser countries know. We appeal, then, to our Government to give ns the proper uon-penal homes and hospitals for these; to abolish all imprisonment for poverty, and to revise our Habitual Criminals Act. We appeal to our courts to use imprisonment only, as the Lord Chief Justice advises, “ as the last resort;” to admit more freely to probation and to borstal less; and never to “ declare ” except on most weighty cause. Since they have begun to send fewer “ never previously convicted ” to prison, we would point out that crime has not increased; it has decreased. Wo are not, in fact, a criminal community. Why, then, must we continue to suffer the social disgrace of so many prisons and so many prisoners? It is not necessary.—l am, etc., H. Shaw, Hon. Secretary Howard League. Auckland, September 20.