APPEAL COURT’S LENIENCY.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 August 1921, Page 5

APPEAL COURT’S LENIENCY.

JUSTICE SALMOND’S CRITICISM. DANGER OF PROBATION. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, August 1. Mr. Justice Salmond, in the Supreme Court, gave expression to his views of the Court of Appeal’s new standard of punishment, for crime, as illustrated in ft case last week in which a sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment on a forger was reduced to one of probation. Addressing a Gisborne forger, his Honor said that accused had altered a cheque for wages from £1 16s to £lO 16s. There was no excuse for the offence and if his Honor were at liberty to do what he thought right in the exercise of his own judgment he should/ pass a sentence of six months’ imprison/ ment. Fortunately for the prisoner tjife question of a proper standard of criminal isenten.ee had been reviewed and 1 in a more serious case, where a man/ attempted to steal another man’s eaviings, there being no proof of extenuating circumstances, the Appeal Court held/ that I an offence of that character was not dei serving of any punishment and tire prisoner had been discharged and automatically admitted to probation. Hjfe Honor was bound to follow that precedent, but said: “The decision seems to me to amount to this and else, that probation is a master of course and of right in cases of offence- ,Zf dishonesty, unless they are repeat wl, Tn other words, every man in thyC country is entitled to commit one t,4ieft or one forgery with safety and /remain at liberty, and I cannot help th/nking that it is a doctrine unsound and/ dangerous, the ipevitable result of which is degradation of the standard of/honesty in this community.” Probation, as his Honor regarded it, ought Xo be treated as a special privilege W be granted on special grounds and in Special cases, not a privilege to be gra/nted as a right and of ; course in all /cases of a certain class To grant probation in the present case ■ and in the artpeal case, and in such cases | where the offences were committed de- I liberately bjf an adult without excuse, ; was a direct’ method of producing crim? in this eountjry, not of preventing it. The prisoner was discharged and ordered to come up fo/r sentence within two years if called ujjion. Four years’ imprisonment was passed by his Hofrior Mr. Justice Salmond upon ■' "whitehead, of Te Awamu'tu, Ity to a charge of incest.