CRIME AND ITS PUNISHMENT

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 60, 13 March 1913, Page 4

CRIME AND ITS PUNISHMENT

Wellington’s Dominion remarks:— The other day the public of this country and not a few newspapers were feeling grateful to Judge Edwards for his free resort to the lash as an actual, and not a merely theoretically correct, treatment of certain horrible criminals. If Judge Edwards were a London Judge he would have the lladical pack after him, if we are able to judge from the ferocity with which the Daily News has assailed a Judge who, at the Old Bailey, said very bluntly that some Judges shrank from ordering floggings when it should bo ordered. This Radical journal taunted the Judge with a lack of courage, in his turn, in not himself carrying out his sentences. “Why,” it asked—and we are ready believe that a great section of the Daily News’s public regarded this fatuous question as a final argument—“why should Judge Rentoul leave to a common warder the glory of the valour of wielding the lash?” Such a question requires no attention, but for those who are curious in such matters some other parts of the article may be noted. Intended as strong arguments against severe punishments, they are entirely conclusive arguments in favour of unsentimental justice and adequate severity. We are warned against “the corrupting of the mind by all cruel and barbarous punishments”—as if our criminal code would lead to a purification of the public mind if it provided that murderers and ravishers should be coddled and even specially pensioned. Then there is “the peril to justice arising from the separation between sentence and punishment” ! A Judge, that is to say, cannot deal out justice because he sits apart from the place of punishment! There can be no more naked plea than this for the permanent security of criminals. If Judge Edwards had to flog the criminals, hang the murderers, mind the gaols, drill the convicts, capture the escapees, and all the other duties in the enforcement of criminal law, and if all the other Judges had to do the same, there would certainly be few sentences passed. And this is the Radical view, apparently, of what is an ideal state of affairs.