Habitual Criminals

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 272, 23 April 1914, Page 5

Habitual Criminals

THE SYSTUM CRITICISED.

THE CHIEF JUSTICE EXPLAINS.

By Telegraph—Press Association Wellington, Last Night. Regarding the statements made by police and magistrate at Palmerston North respecting the efficacy or otherwise of the restraint of a probationary license upon a habitual criminal after his release by the Prison Board, the Chief Justice stated to a reporter today: "I have seen the statements. I am afraid the person who made the remurks supposed to have been made does not appreciate the position or mode of dealing with habitual criminals. The Prison Board has felt that the mere fact of a man being made a habitual criminal does not mean that the prisoner is to be kept in gaol for the rest of his natural life. It means that the duty of the Prison Board is to try to redeem him, to give him a chance of redeeming himself, and so free himself from gaol. The Board knows, and everybody must know, that a criminal cannot be expected to reform all at once. It is the duty of the Board to make an effort time and again to reform him. An Ancient Book Bays that we should forgive our enemy, 'even unto seventy times seven.' The Board does not expect that a person released on probation will necessarily become all at once a good citizen. There will be lapses, but if it is laid down that if a man is once declared a habitual there is to be no further hope for him, and that he must remain in gaol for the rest of is life, there is no need for a Prison Board or for the habitual criminal system at all. It will be merely necessary fo sentence a man to imprisonment for life."