THE USE OF “THE CAT.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 400, 20 June 1908, Page 2

THE USE OF “THE CAT.”

Tkk once notorious Jabez Balfour contributes an article to the London Dailj' Mail, in which he strongly urges the punishment of flogging in certain cases. He writes : —Does corporal punishment deter ? If it does not, it is needless to persevere with it. But ray own personal observation convinces me that it does. There was a man at Parkhurst—l grieve to say an educated man —who had been many times a prisoner. He was deliberately at war with society, and he carried on the warfare inside the prison walls with much the same venom as he had done outside. I myself saw him leap suddenly upon an officer’s back and batter his head and face. The officer was rescued with difficulty. The offender was tried before the magistrates and sentenced to be flogged. The sentence was confirmed and carried out. After a short time the prisoner returned to his ordinary work apparently none the worse for his ordeal. He assumed a jaunty air. The suffering he had undergone did not appear to have changed his disposition. Tie was as quarrelsome and vindictive as ever, but though he often talked of violence he never again attempted it. Fear, the fear of acute physical suffering, and that alone, kept him, henceforth, within hounds. At one time oranolher before he was flogged he had undergone every form of prison punishment, and all without effect. The “cat” alone proved successful. How' can the State safely deprive itself of the right to avail itself of such a deterrent in such cases? Unhappily the cases are not rare. Now apply, as we may justly do, this experience to cowardly crimes of violence upon helpless and unoffending women and children and lonely wayfarers. If the “cat” deters, as we have seen it does deter, the brutal, hardened, and deliberate criminal, will it not have the same effect on precisely the same type of ruffian who may never yet have found himself in prison, but who is graduating in the same kind of crime? The man who commits such offence is nearly always a phj-sical coward. The prospect of imprisonment has often no terrors lor him. It means in many cases better food and much less work than await him in freedom. It will never restrain his evil passions—his cruelty, his lust, his envy, his revenge. Physical pain is the only thing he really dreads. He is as keen to avoid it in his own person as he is indifferent to inflicting it upon others. It is, I confess with sorrow, the last resort of society in its own defence. It should only be used as such, sparingly, reluctantly, exceptionally ; but to dispense with it altogether is to capitulate to the worst and most degraded elements of human nature.