The Daily News. THURSDAY, JULY 7. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 75, 7 July 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, JULY 7. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.

Only the criminals who are caught are punished. They are placed in durance, not because any iiueiiigeuD person believes that imprisonment will cure their mental kink, but because the public must be protected. Only a small proportion of criminals are detected. The remainder roam at large. If this were not so i lie re would be no societies of anarchists, no "'Camorra/' no ".black Hand" organisations, and so on. The natural leeiing of the normal man for the abnormal person who commits crime is that he should be punished for an abnormality hj« -cannot help. No man who is punished for an offence he could not help was ever improved by punishment. Only by the most patient study of mental abnormality can any light be thrown on one of the darkest subjects man has to deal with. In oldeja times all criine was attributed to arrant, wilful, planned wickedness. The person of diseased mind was tortured. Anyone who has taken the trouble to read, and anyone who has seen for themselves the instruments with which our immediate forefathers inflicted punishment on people who were obviously abnormal, and therefore not responsible, must have been struck with their hideous unfairness. There is to be seen in London to-day the rack, the thumbscrews, the "scavenger's daughter," the pillory, the guillotine, and numerous other devices once used for "righteously" punishing evildoers. There is no record on earth of a diseased mind having been made whole by physical punishment. The fear of a repetition of personal chastisement may prevent a person from attempting a further breach of the law—but that is'' all. Anyone who has had an opportunity of studying criminals—one of the most fascinating of all studies —must have observed that every criminal has his specialty. That is-to say, he is, first and last, a maniac. We have innumerable cases in; New Zealand where a man has been repeatedly punished for the, same or an allied crime. A forger so invariably employs the same method that the really expert investigator Knows his "work" the moment he sees it. Even the petty thief is a specialist. Many housebreakers have a penchant for one "line" of work,' and the criminal of larger calibre, if he has been successful in committing the greatest crime in the calendar in a particular manner, will, if possible, imitate his first method thereafter. It is proved, then, without question, that a criminal is a person .with a diseased mind. It is -riot possible under our modern system to eliminate the criminal.' Public opinion will not allow it. In fact, public opinion so frequently morally supports and pities the criminal that the question is beset with difficulties at every point. Our forefathers were not so squeamish, and the method of elimination was very general. It is impossible to believe in criminal heredity. The same environment may produce many criminals, but we have examples of criminals producing geniuses, and of geniuses producing criminals. Some people cannot "go wrong" in any environment; others are susceptible to every evil influence. The man who cannot go wrong has no moral right to claim superiority on that account. He cannot help being "good," any more than the criminal can help being "bad." Because some of these obvious points have been drilled into the generally cut-and-dried brains of legislators and the, mathematical persons who control the people generally, they have come to the conelusion that punishment—mere, sheer, brutal punishment—is absolutelv fv.'ile in dealing with the problem. It has been found impossible, even in Germany and Italy, where the study of criminology has had the best results, the real causes of crime in each individual. In some cases where physical .derangement has been noted and the disability removed, criminals have become normal It isi conceivable that no person in New Zealand understands why Powelka committed the.crimes he was found guilty of, or why Archibald McNeil is the kind of to an he is. And the problem remains unsolved. We shall have our proper proportion of criminals to the crack of doom. Perhaps, realising this, the heads of States are seeking now to entirely reform prison methods, with the view of removing the cause which has made the criminal. Unless, however, the State is able to diagnose each individual case of mental aberration or crime mania, its methods will have merely the effect of making prisoners comfortable. No statistics of reformed criminals are ever published, and the man who is really criminal never is reformed until he is dead or the reason of his sin is removed. We believe that no man is wholly bad, and that most men have one phase of badness, so that they are useful persons apart from their evil predilection, and can be made to perform good service to the State. But we also hold that the most careful study of every individual man quite apart from the ordinary eut-and-dried official method—is the only way by which light can be thrown on the causes of crime. Science teaches the dumb to talk by lip-movements, has given the deaf a trace of.hearing, has cured the blind, and has prevented further encroachment by tubercular bacilli. Science is the application of common sense. Common sense is either the result of genius or of patient, long-suffer-ing research, experiment, and lovingkindness. The science that has not tired in its marvellous investigation of discovered diseases may in time probe the rsecret of crime. We can only hope that it will be so.