WEEKEND GAOL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 December 1938, Page 8

WEEKEND GAOL

FOR INTOXICATED MOTORISTS AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION OPPOSITION. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) BLENHEIM, This Day. “There is no need for Mr Semple to feel resentment,” declared Mr R. P. Furness, president of the Marlborough Automobile Association, commenting on the Transport Minister’s response to the South Island Motor Union’s opposition, at its Greymouth meeting, to the weekend gaol scheme for drunken drivers. Mr Furness said he was actuated solely by a desire that the intoxicated motorist should suffer the utmost penalty and felt that the Minister’s desire to shield the offender’s family from suffering was the weak' point in the scheme. “The intoxicated driver has very little thought for the families of the people he runs into, and if he thinks his own family will have to share in the penalty for his actions, I ccnsider it will probably be a greater deterrent than if he knows that he alone has to suffer," Mr Furness observed.

He denied the Minister’s suggestion (hat, in criticising, he was sneering at the proposal. So far as weekend imprisonment was concerned, it was stated at the Greymouth meeting by Mr A. Grayson, acting-president of the North Island Motor Union, that of the American States which had originally adopted the practice, all but two had since abandoned it, one of the reasons being that the ridicule to which offenders were subjected had a detrimental psychological effect, making the cure worse that the disease.