THEORY OF PUNISHMENT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4704, 28 May 1924, Page 3

THEORY OF PUNISHMENT.

LECTURE BY MR. BARTON, S.M. An address was delivered before the- Wanganui Rational Associ^° n bv Mr J. S. Barton, S.M., on The Theory of Punishment” (reports, the Chronicle). . The speaker commenced by pointing out how in all departments pf human life and affairs there entered the idea of reward for good actions and punishment for what was deemed to be bad. He enumerated, as illustrating this point, religion, State administration of justice, family and home life, industry and business life, and all clubs, societies, and guilds that set up standards of excellence and rules for attaining to those’standards. He indicated that his remarks would centre round the administration of justice by the State, as that afforded the best basis for studying and applying principles. Punishment it was generally conceded, should fie deterrent, preventive, reformative, and retributive. The retributive element seemed to indicate the origin of those ideas and the birth of the system of State administration of justice. It was originally revenge for interference with proprietary rights. As ideas of social organisation developed, society assumed .the task, firstly of regulating private vengeance, then of prohibiting it, and offering itself the vindication of rights and punishment of wrongs of tribunals. The retributive element, now expressed as a command emotion in the form of widespread moral indignation, was the ultimate source and sanction of criminal jurisprudence. Most of the discussion now devoted to the theory of punishment by the State centred round the rival schools which urged respectively the deterrent and the reformative points of view. The speaker thought that both must be appreciably present in any well-balanced system; he indicated that the tendency in this Dominion was to develop and trust increasingly to the reformative theory. Developing this point, he quoted figures and official reports in support of his opinion that the adoption and extension of this system was justified by results. The speaker justified, as a retributive punishment, the use of the lash in appropriate cases. He did not think the facts justified the . claim that it brutalised the judicial officers who imposed it, or the wrong-doer who suffered it. It might easily, be degraded into a brutalising practice, but in this country, .ordered by humane judges after full inquiry into all bearings of the problem, limited to responsible beings who knowingly committed gross crimes, carried out by judicial officers well versed in our present-day. reformative and humane methods, but fortified with a sense of moral indignation, it was an act of expiation that, in the speaker’s experience, had had good results. Objectors, said Mr Barton were apt to proceed on the assumption that character was the only thing that punishment might be applied to. Motive was an element in the commission of a crime, often as potent as character, and vigorous retributory punishment could be thrown into the scale on that count, and thus supply an artificial motive that no calculating wrong-doer would leave out of account.