CAUSE AND CURE OF CRIME.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10074, 23 August 1910, Page 5

CAUSE AND CURE OF CRIME.

PRONOUNCEMENT BY CHIEF JUSTICE EFFECTS OF NO-LICENSE, (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, Last Night. In his charge to the Grand Jury in the Supreme U urt today, the Chief Justice referred at length to prison reform. He said that if one took the trouble to investigate the history of many criminals, he would find ample evidence of the effects of heredity. Some criminals might be said to be hardly responsible for their, act.'ons. They required to be restrained. They must not run away with the idea, said Chi f Justice, that prison reform was going to entirely do away with crime. They could not expect to eliminate it in a short while. They might make no progress fo? fifty or a hundred years; but it was enough to make a beginning. A prison might be a place of detention; but he thought prisoners should have more freedom and amusement than at present. The most potent factor in the repression of crime was the fact that the criminal knew of the certainty of his conviction. This fact would have a far greater effect on him than punishment. Where a jury found excuses for men and neglected to do its duty, there you would find crime prevalent. Careless or negligent juries meant that crime would flourish. Sir Robert Stout attributed the excess of crime in the North Island to the fact that men who did not want woik favoured a warmer climate. During the past five yearß the convictions in the Supreme Court were—ln the South Island, 1.5 per thousand of population; and in the North Island, 3.0 per thousand. In Auckland the figures were 3.1; Wellington, 3.3; Hawke'a Bay, 3.2; Taranaki, 0.7. The low criminal rate in Otago might be due to the fact that a number of people in that district wero living under nolicense. About one-half the crime on the Auckland calendar this session was attributed to the prisoners having been drinking, or under the influ - ence of liquor. Be made these remarks for his hearers to consider the propriety and necessity for ths formation of societies to promote a better state of things. He referred specially to a society in Christchurch, which was helping people who had made a first lapse in crime.