THE HOME OFFICE AND CRIME .
[To the Editor of TILE SPECTATOR] SIR,—I am glad to read Mr. Howard Perkin's letter in your issue of the 25th. I am one of the many who feel that all this " bandbox and cotton-wool " treatment of the offender against the law is being much overdone.
It would -be interesting to have the official explanation of why the prison-warder only is to be protected by the flogging punishment ; he is probably armed and within reach of any help he may need. If there be any value in flogging at all should it not be applicable to, say, the two hooligans, in a case recently reported in Essex, who pulled a girl from her cycle, forcibly raped her, and left her lying in her distress. Is a prison warder's safety of more moment than that of a harmless citizen who was decoyed into an hotel and nearly killed, after being robbed, by four Mayfair " lounge-lizards " ?
Apparently under the new technique some one will say " You shouldn't do that, it's naughty, You must be deprived of your liberty in a prison which, in future, will be run like a well-organised club."
In my 2o years' experience as a magistrate, I recall at least two instances of an offence committed solely for the reason, admitted by the perpetrators, that with winter coming on, they were anxious to get back to prison where they had been so comfortable, and this was long before all these' proposed reforms: The truth of the old maxim, " Spare the rod and spoil the child " is emphasised by the fact that whereas in 1934 the number
of indictable offences under the age of 17 was 20,540, in 1936 the total had risen to 27,126, and among children from ten to fourteen, the comparative figures are 1929, 6,000, 1936, 13,704, more than TOO per cent. increase (Criminal Statistics, April, 1938).
I suggest that magistrates should use all the various powers they now possess—even stretching them to breaking point— to prevent a person entering a prison and, equally, the com- munity—or Society—should help the prisoner, as he leaves the prison gates, to set him on his feet again, but the period in between should be sufficiently uncomfortable to act as a deterrent in the future.—Yours faithfully, z8 Laburnham Road, Maidenhead.
SYDNEY R. THOMPSON.
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