A Question of Criminality

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 29, 16 July 1903, Page 18

A Question of Criminality

People who make odious and ill-taken comparisons should clothe themselves in armor like a medieval knight or a modern American footballer. For they pro\oko reprisals and must expect hard knocks. A Scottish clergyman in Palmerston North would have done well to ha\e looked to his own land before going out of his way to iling unfair, unprovoked, and groundless charges ot excessive relathe criminality against the Catholics of New Zealand, who, as he falsely averred, do not gi\e their children the Bible. As his whole contention was based upon an absurd misreading of our prison statistics, we invite him to exercise his mind upon the fact that the commitments in his native country alone are, proportionately, greatly in excess of those oi England or Ireland. The annual report of the Scottish Prison Commissioners shows that there were 65,721 commitments to prison last year in the Land o' Cakes. Of these, 4(5,000 were for breaches of the peace, drunkenness, and obscene behavior. For offences closely associated with excessive drinking, Scottish commitments ate, in proportion to population, twice as numerous as those of England or Ireland. In Ireland, on the other hand, the authorities have closed prison after prison for want of occupants, the presentation of white glo\es to judges is the order of the day, last year's return of nnsdemeanois .shows an exceedingly low calendar, rvlwq offences are almost unknown, and, with tho agianan question happily settled, the record of real crime in Ireland will almost be like the historic chapter on its snakes : ' there are no snakes m Ireland.'