The Daily News MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8. PROTECTING THE PEOPLE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 12, 8 February 1909, Page 2

The Daily News MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8. PROTECTING THE PEOPLE.

At the Wellington Supreme Court last | week .Mr. Justice Cooper treated some of the worst criminals iu .New Zealand as if Ihey were criminals, and not poor souls who should be lectured in a mild way and put aside lor a few months in order to recuperate for fresh crimes. It is an axiom that the real criminal always comes out of gaol with a lixed intention of committing a crime similai to or worse than the one for which he t was punished. During ihe last few years there have been very numerous crimes of violence, ami particularly is Die pas time of breaking and entering increasing, Every judge in New Zealand re-

gards crime from a different standpoint. Every judge, too, is likely to be a little inlluenced by his own stale of health or feeling, so that supposing a judge is sullering from heat or a bad digestion, the criminals who are before him will be much more likely to get their deserts than they would if ije judge were in a state of healthy exhilaration. At the Wellington sessions iu one day live violent criminals, none of wliwn should ever be allowed to go free any more were each sentenced to seven years' hard lal>onr. and three of these rullians

—all of them young—-were declared to be habitual criminals. The average person, knowing this, will probably believe that as far as these three scoundrels are concerned society is safe for all time from them, seeing that •'indeterminate sentence" means ''lor ever and ever." JJut the danger is that these habitual criminals will be treated according to precedent; that they will behave ju au exemplary maimer ill the gaol, that they will not serve tlm full sentence of seven

years, that they will be released on pro-1 halion, and that they will have every i opportunity of escaping. There lias been no serious attempt to make the rndeter-1 ininate sentence operative. In the mean-1 time the big sentences given by Mr. Justice Cooper will have a great effect! oil the criminal population of the Dominion and will give the police a rest. Society will be in some degree safe from the commission of those crimes of violence which have been so common lately; and while, no sentence given will make a free or bond criminal more moral I it prevents either from committing crime for fear of personal consequences.

The mental aspect of crime is really the only one worth considering if there is to be an attempt made in New Zealhind to make soci'ety freer from the presence of criminals. In natural society only tho tit are allowed to live. Thc{ man who is not physically tit is siofc nursed and eared for by natural man. lie is allowed to shift for himself, aud lie soon passes out or is killed by a

stronger than he. In communities where I there is no State-organised justice the people take the law in their own hands. A scallawag of the iype of the m"n sentenced by Judge Cooper would not be allowed to live—that's all. Not that the sealhuvag can help being so: but still the sorrow for his inability to tell the right from tho wrong would never blind a community of natural men to the advantage of getting him olf the earth. | Science nowadays takes the. place of hu- i man instinct, and as instinct is either dead or dying in all the allegedly civilised communities, some day the matter of the propagation of the "unfit will receive the attention of science. No temptation can a fleet a normally healthyminded man, and so no normally healthy-minded man ought to hlsnnc an abnormal man for committing crimes he leant help. iJiut the normal man wants to be protected, and therefore has to light the unfortunate decadent.

Science has not yet so far advanced as to ascertain the probable mental evolution of the infant, and there is no reason to suppose that the child of a criminal will ho a, criminal too. In the case of one of tho men sentenced to seven years' " indeterminate" bv Mr. Justice Cooper, this danger6us criminal is one of a family all of whom aiv) "crooks.'' In another case there is no record <>f any of the criminal's relatives

ever having committed a crime or having Iteon in an asylum for the insane. Insanity and crime are closely allied. Crime is as much a disease as any of the known physical ailments, but,' unlike most of them, is nearly always incurable. |f the criminal who is incurable wore reincarcerated indefinitely before he propagated, this method might have some effect on the criminal censuses of the lutui'e. Ihe wild desire of no inconsiderable number of the people, of the country to obtain a sinecure or do until* ing at all is giving us a loafer class all too large. It is the subjection to harsh burdens of tho loafer class on which Jios New Zealand's hope of immunity from crime.