This “Kindness Stuff”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1018, 8 July 1930, Page 8

This “Kindness Stuff”

MODERN CRIME PUNISHMENT

(Written lor THE SUN

WHITHER penal reform.’ Societies and individual persons pressing for reconstruction of our prison system are they blindly defeating their purpose? Retired policemen and a pensioned gaoler or two here in Auckland, burly types of the old school, who have examined something of the trend of modern punishments, shake greying heads when you chat with them about criminals and about this sentence and that.

Ail ex-officer ol liis Majesty's prison in whose custody criminals of many breeds and grades and nations had done time made it clear, in discussing prisons and prison reform the other day, that he has precarious faith in what he terms the "kindness stuff." He believes that the only way to extinguish incipient criminality is to get underneath an offender's skin. For reformative de- j tention he has little time; for probation. none whatever. Ninteenth century, every hit of him, this man looks with disgust upon the tendency of the hour. He predicts a return to the cat-o’-nine-tails, which if not a cure-all is certainly a jiowerful deterrent, he says. | This gaoler of days "when gaols I were gaols” tells a number of stories of punishments he has administered, both to youthful delinquents as well !as to "habituals.” Moreover, he looks | back on the painful occasion (to the subjects of his ministrations) with a certain relish. If there is one institution upon which he frowns more than any other it is the Children's Court. The punishments there meted out to 1930 offenders such as (he says), "Why don't you join a football team?” or “Will you promise not to do it again, young men?” or “Two years’ probation," fill him with scorn. “Most of those young brats will be at. it again if they're let off like that.” he claims. He would like the task of curing them. It is this man's boast that he has never twice "tanned the hide” of a youthful offender, his meaning. being, of course, that once was sufficient for most youngsters.

and ward over (lie criminal is still of opinion that fear, not kindness, not psychology, not analysis, is the most effective string upon which to play. Dread of the “cat” is very real among criminals. There was recently published the account of a prison suicide in Great Britain. The victim was an old criminal but had never received punishment more unbearable than a term of y*ears. His last exploit earned him 10 years’ penal servitude and 15 lashes with the “cat. So intense was his fear that he took his life after crying: “I’ll die before I’ll take the cat.” In view of the increase in crime attributable to sexual perverts, if not to other causes, people are beginning to wonder whether analysis of the criminal mind and so forth actually represents an advance on the more painful methods of yesteryear. Certainly ! crime against children will not wholly disappear, no matter what the deterrent, just as murder will always shock the community no matter how stern the penalty. But an increasing section of the public, parents particularly, asking whether the lenity of the judges in declining “to meet brutality with the brutality of the lash,” is net : mistaken justice. I Again, the public wants to know what is the true effect of admonishments and kind counsellings on the mind of the youth whose lack of par ental control and environment incite to a life of larrikinism. or even crim- ! inality. The “rods in pickle” are sup- ; posed to be a relic of the barbarous i age. yet have they outlived their useI fulness in moulding character? Like 1 the old gaoler aud the one-time police I constables people are becoming rest--1 less over the “kindness stuff.” They wonder if after all virtue is most re sponsive to what Dean Inge delights to call “the wholesome birch.” OLD TIMER.

The ex-gaoler related that one of his colleagues was almost a law unto himself. Whoever came into his keeping for “treatment” feared him. In fine, the old brigade who -kept watch