PUNISHMENT OF CRIME

Hokitika Guardian, 28 March 1931, Page 8

PUNISHMENT OF CRIME

“NOT FOR THE LAW.”

SPECIALISTS SITG-OESTF.D

WELLINGTON. March 26

Expressing the opinion that legal education to-day did not qualify a man to be the best judge of punishment, Professor T. A. Hunter, of Victoria University, in an address hist •veiling to the Wellington bn inch of ‘he Now Zealand Howard League for Penal Reform, suggested that punishment should be taken out of the hands the law and given to the adjud'--,'tion of a bo-lv of sociologists, educationists and .psychologists, who bad studied the complexity of human nature.

“Law is. mainly a tradition,” said Professor Hunter. “The lawyer looks with his face to the p-st. Scientific principles and scientific methods have never been applied to the solution ol sonic of these, fundamental problems of our social life, and I heli°vo that as long as we leave them in the hands of lawyers those,principles will never b<? applied to those probl ms.” NEED FOR RESEARCH. Local education of to-day did not qualify a man to he the best judge as to the type, conditions and forms of pun:sbments in dealing with delinquents. That was not part of the. lawyer’s -duration at all. He picked it up as he went along, hut that was all. The problem was one to which psychology, education and sociology would have to -ontribute. One of the greatest reforms that could, be made would he to take punishments out of the hands of the law. Let the law find a man guilty or not guilty, hut the actual award of punishment should he in the hands of those who had looked into the merits of the ease. We were probably not ready for that to-day, because. the information was not to hand, so that further research would Have to he carried out

Professor Hunter suggested that one of the wavs in which the Howard Reform League could contribute to the solution of such problems was to set ui> a committee iii order to investigate the whole problem- of punishment by dealing with individual cases. If prisoners were conferred with the precise effect of punishments received could he. ascertained. APOfRTTVEi PUNISHMENT.

Much that was cruel in; punishment bad marked the, development of human life. Certain systems and ideas had come to he looked upon as inevitable, and sometimes, as perfect. That was true of the past and also of the present. There could be no doubt that our successors in New Zealand a hundred years hence would look back and wonder at the stupidity wind cruelty of today. The essential basis of success in punishment was to realise that iust as drought, disaster, earthquake, and flood came from natural, causes, so did man’s inhumanity to man flow from certain social and psychological conditions. Society wn.s beginning to believe that much of its crime was the result of its own action. Much of modern punishment produced exactly the opposite effect to that which was desired. The problem of to-day was the complexity of human nature, and a great deal more research would have to be done.