The Southland Times. FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 1868.

Southland Times, Issue 911, 6 March 1868, Page 2

The Southland Times. FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 1868.

In previous articles we have pointed out various defects of the penal system existing in this colony, and that the formation of a central establishment in some isolated locality was essential to the suppression of crime. The evidence that the transportation punishment for hardened criminals must be revived is daily accumulating. The inadaptability of local prisons being converted into provincial penal settlements with success, has been so clearly demonstrated by the experience of the last ten years in Australia, as well as in I New Zealand, that we think even the strongest advocates of the reformatory j system must confess that leniency, indulgence, and religious instruction is not a panacea for the evils arising from a development of the various instincts of the criminal-minded. We have two cases before us iOustrative of the defective nature of the syafcesa now in operation— a system that tends to create an earnest desire in the minds of the authorities to get rid of the most determined of the criminals under their charge, regardless of the interests ofthenoghboring provinces to which they might go. It is patent that local gaola in new. settlements lack the accommodation required for the imprisonment of criminals of all classes and descriptions. It would be folly to imagine that the nine provinces of ISTew Zealand can afford to keep up nine petty penal settlements and carry out the principle of classification of offenders that is essential to reformation. If the hardened criminal is thrown into contact with the youthful breaker of the law, instead of reformation we have the latter tutored to the practice of crimes of greater magnitude than he previously conceived. It is proved that the system of local penal establishments not only increases the evil propensities of the prisoner but demoralises the officers. In fact it is acknowledged by the thinking men of the home country and Australia that the ticket-of-leave theory has exploded. When prisons have become over-crowded, even the most de-perate convicts have been released in order to make room for others, long before the period of their sentence had expired, on condition that the convict quit for ever the locality in which he had been imprisoned. This is especially the case in New Zealand; criminals are continually hunted out of one province to immediately make their appearance, and prosecute their nefarious trade in another. How is this ever to be remedied ? We see no other way to overcome the difficulty than by the establishment of a penal settlement on au isolated island, to which hardened criminals can be sent, with the positive knowledge that the sentence will be strictly enforced ; leniency, indulgence, and mitigation of sentence has been fairly tested and proved a failure — a signal and unmistakable mistake. JBlackstone, the giant authority on criminal law, laid it down as a fundamental principle, that it is not so much the severity of the sentence as the certainty of its being enforced, that is calculated to suppress crime. This opinion, given nearly a century ago, has become a truism from the experience of the last few scores of years. Is the system adopted in New Zealand calculated to suppress lawlessness to the extent that it should, considering the great expenditure its police and gaols entail? Certainly not. With its isolated police forces and provincial prisons; with its local interests and provincial jealousies, the chief aim of the authorities is to clear their own territory at the exj pense of their neighbors. The two cases to which wo referred in the first part of this article are strictly illustrative of the evils of which we complain. In the first case — the notorious murderer StjllitaNj who has been serving his sentence of transportation for life, has been sent to Otago on the ground that the Nelson gaol was not a fit place for him, that his mixino with the other and less crimeO stained prisoners was exercising a dangerous influence on the whole establishment. Is this right — is it j ust that one Province, because at its own expense it has erected a more secure prison-house than another, is to be saddled with the custody of such demoniac fiends as this man ? No ! but it is the natural result of the want of a central penal establishment. Tiie second case is one of equal significance. Nelson wanted to get rid of Sullivan, and he was posted on Otago; and Otago wanted to get rid of the scarcely less notorious bushranger G-ABEi'T, and be was pardoned long before his sentence expired, to go whore he chose and renew his criminal career. This man, it will be recollected, distinguished himself as a daring, bloodthirsty bushranger in the early days of the Victorian goldfields, and was sentenced to a very long period of servitude. Strange to say, shortly after the Tuapeka diggings were discovered, the.

authorities in Victoria, for some reason unknown, gave him a ticket-of-leave, of course with the understanding that he left the colon j : they were tired of the expense and trouble of keeping him, and therefore sent him as a gift to New Zealand. "What was the consequence ? In a short time he appeared at the head of a party of bushrangers, and became the terror of travellers between Dunedin and the goldfields. In one day he stuck-up, robbed, bound to trees, and violently assaulted no less than twenty-three persons. He was captured, tried, and found guilty of several charges of highway robbery under arms, and sentenced to eight years penal servitude. At the time this sentence was unanimously condemned, on the ground that he was deserving of a | much heavier punishment. Still we learn J that at the expiration of six years he | got a free pardon, and was again let loose on society. The authorities, however, upon second thoughts remembered that the ordinary guarantee to leave the Province had not been obtained. The Commissioner of Police, Mr BeajSTiga^, then went to the Dunedin Hospital, and demanded from him a pledge to leave, and never return to the province of Otago. He refused to give any such promise. What was the result ? He was arrested as a Victorian convict, illegaly at large, and shipped to Melbourne without any warrant, in charge of two detectives. On being brought up before the Melbourne Bench, he was discharged on the ground that no warrant was produced, but on conditioc that he would leave the colony within ten days. The Bench censured the conduct of Mr Bbamgan, and evidently regretted that this notorious outlaw, had been again brought before it. Here we iave unmistakeable evidence of the necessity for a central penal settlement and consolidation of the police force. If the police force waa a colonial corps, the hunting of dangerous characters from locality to locality would never happen, and with a colonial penal establishment, the provincial stockade officers would be freed from the trouble of keeping desperate convicts, and not be induced to resort to illegitimate means in. order to scout them from one district to visit another. Local penal establishments have been tried and ; failed. Victoria is seeking an island in the Pacific, on which to plant a convict settlement, and the suggestion we recently made as to the Auckland Islands being chosen for a similar purpose for New Zealand, has been taken up by the press in other provinces. Both Provincialists and Centralists must agree that to secure efficiency and economy in either the police or the penal departments they must be colonial and not provincial institutions.