A Cat's Life
READLRs of the NCIVN ChrOnide on Monday were surprised and alarmed to read, as the introduction to the main news story, that 78 per cent, of the people of Britain want a return of corporal punishment for crimes of violence. And those readers who turned on to an inside page to look at the break-down of the actual Gallup Poll figures must also have been surprised though not for the same reason. The poll had put forward a number of possible crimes for which the 'cat' might be brought back'. rape: sexual assault on a child; robbery with violence on an old lady, or on a young man; 'teddy-boy' brawling: and homosexual offences. For no single offence was the 'bring back the cat' rate as high as 40 per cent.: and only in three cases (rape. sexual assault on a child, and robbery with .violence on an old lady) was ii over 25 per cent. In other words, the statement '78 per cent, of the people of Britain want a return of corporal punishment for crimes of violence' is incorrect : this per- centage wants corporal punishment for a crime Of violence, but there is considerable disagree- ment on which crime. 'This is easily explained: most of us have one type of crime about Which we feel violent (if the poll had asked about flogging for hit-and-run drivers they might have got quite a high percentage, too); but there Is no evidence of a widespread reversion to medireval barbarism. Taken separately, in fact, the figures are not discouraging. The more pity, then, that the News Chronicle—of all papers—
should have presented the story in so misleading a form.
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