The Daily News. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1912. CRIME AND CAUSES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 204, 26 February 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1912. CRIME AND CAUSES.

It is exceptionally interesting, especially ill a country where everything is brand now, to note the various attitudes of judges towards «rime, their very varied punishments, and their conclusions as to causes. Many judges seem to have an inalterable idea that the criminal is a normal being who could restrain himself from committing; crime if he liked. Punishments in nearly all cases are based on ilhis premise, and where they are not so based, the law generally frees the incurable criminal after he has served but a portion of his sentence, and is supposed by emotional but utterly illogical people to be cured. -In our view, the remarks of the Qhief Justice (Sir Robert Stout) at Wanganui, and Mr. Justice Edwards at Auckland in regard to the supposed causes of crime are hardly worthy of men who believe they understand human nature and the variable elements that make up society. The Chief Justice said he hoped that the comparative absence of crime, illustrated by the fewness of the cases to be heard by him at Wanganui, was an indication ■ that the present humanitarian" method of dealing with criminals was having due effect. In nearly all cases of criminal breach of the law, the characters of the criminals who break the law have been formed before they appear to answer to charges. The judge, in most cases, deals more with evidence than with humanity, with effects more than with causes, with results rather than with beginnings. The person who has studied the human animal outside the courts knows that the ordinary criminal is entirely dead to any influence that may be exerted to make him "go straight." It is as impossible for him to avoid going crooked as it is for a different type of man to avoid being law-abiding; but the judges generally presume that the will power of the one is equal to the will power of the other. The "humanitarian" legislation or treatment of criminals which deals with the ripe product has no more effect on the purification of society than the resolutions of a harbor board has on the tides. The criminal, as most judges know, is a person who is highly emotional, and who really believes that his protestations are quite honest and that his promises will be kept. There is no record, either here or anywhere else, of any treatment, humanitarian or punitive, changing the,nature of a criminal, and all efforts to instruct criminals in the higher branches of education is merely waste effort, if the point that it gives them greater skill as criminals is excepted.; Every judge knows, or should know, that habitual criminals have been pitied and helped by the authorities numberless times, that they have protested that

they would lead a new life, and that they intend to keep their promises. The fact is that they are, in almost every case, impotent to reform, and that no power exists that can reform them. The whole trouble is mental, and there is no person now existing who can "minister to a mind diseased" with any definite prospect of curing the disease. New Zealand has adopted what it calls "curative methods," but there are no statistics that can be produced showing a single permanent cure. Released criminals merely bide their time. Their return to crime is absolutely determined by the state of their minds. The only hope of reducing the criminal population is to prevent the breeding of it. Even then Nature is sporadic and produces unhealthy plants from .healthy roots, as she has always done and as she will continue to do for ever. • Sir Robert Stout admitted, what we have so often contended,, that "as long as mental, physical and moral weakness existed, there would be "crime." The problem, then, is to eliminate' mental, physical and moral weakness from humanity. It is absolutely beyond the power of judge, politician, preacher or philanthropist, No cut-and-dried rule can effect brain changes, and general, enlightenment by way of education means simply that the hewers of wood and drawers of water will refuse to draw water arid hew wood. Mr. Justice Edwards has not definitely decided that a mild climate breeds crime, but he thinks that it attracts criminals—wherein is good reason. It is, of .course,, impossible to contend that because the temperature of Auckland is so and so there are more criminal -Aucldanders than criminal Dunedinites, but it is certainly reasonable that a nice climate acts as a'magnet to criminals who are not fond 'of, any exertion that'spelis bodily discomfort.unless the result is dishonest gain." We are amongst those who believe earnestly that grave lectures from the Bench about the evils of a criminal's ways are wholly ineffective, and that to "blow up" a criminal for a fault he, cannot help is as useful as-blaming a man;for contracting fever.' The fact that an odd habitual criminal here or there does not return to the hands of the police - immediately after release is no proof that he has mended his ways." It merely meansthat he is more adept than v ever, and less easily caught.' It will be presently found that the Gilb<srtian New Zealand method of releasing habitual criminals much sooner than criminals who-are not habituals will result in great trouble. It will certainly have the effect of mak-. ing these very clever specialists much cleverer, or of driving them to other countries.