THE HABITUAL CRIMINAL
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—Your correspondent Robert Gladstone is contradicting history when he suggests that the way to get rid of the habitual criminal is to hang him. Penalties more severe than the community approves of always defeat their own object. Thus preventive detention, imposed under the 1908 Act, has become almost a dead letter because it necessarily followed a sentence of penal servitude, and Courts dislike even the appearance of punishing a man twice for one ollence, and juries are reluctant to convict. The recent so-called Baumes Law in New York State was-going to stamp out the habitual offender by imposing a life sentence on every person convicted a fourth time of felony. But the result has been that juries frequently refuse to convict, and rather than allow the offender to go scot free the prosecution usually accept a plea of guilty for a mis- demeanour and evade the law that way.
If this is what happens when sentences of imprisonment are increased, what would be the result of punishing the recidivist by death ? Mr. Gladstone may not be aware of the fact that a strong Departmental Conunittee is at present considering the treatment of recidivism. I fear they will find the remedy less simple than he believes it to be.—I am,
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