The Answer to Violence
There can be no real ground for challenging the Government's decision, announced by the Lord Chancellor, not to reintroduce corporal punishment after having abolished it in 1948. The case does not rest on ethical or psychological considerations. If flogging could be shown to be an effective deterrent it should be reintroduced without hesitation. But the onus of proof is on those who want it reintroduced, and in spite of an impressive speech by Lord Oaksey, and of the respect due to the Lord Chief Justice's well-known views, no clear justification for flogging was provided in the Lords' debate on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Cadogan Committee pronounced against it in 1935, the Magistrates' Association is against it, former , Home Secretaries like Lord ,Samuel and Lord Templewood are against it, and figures produced by the Lord Chancellor dispel the idea that crimes of violence have been more numerous since the abolition of flogging than before. Against this is to be set the advocacy by the Judges in certain cases ; but even so the balance is heavily, on one side. None the less, the situation is alarming, and if the answer is not flogging it must be something else. Long sentences may be partially effective, but no one can be content to leave it at that. Far more necessary is an increased certainty of detection and arrest. For that the police force must be largely and rapidly strengthened—a question mainly of better pay and . better housing conditions. In this field false economy is a crime ; so is the refusal of local authorities to give priority to the police in the matter of housing ; if they want other people's houses safe they, must make that much sacrifice. The evil, of course, goes deep, right down into the homes; It is the result of absence of religion, absence of discipline and—by no means unimportant, as the Chief Magistrate pointed out on Tuesday—absence of playing-fields.
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