ESTABLISHED 1875. The Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1905. PUNISHMENT.

Manawatu Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 422, 8 July 1905, Page 2

ESTABLISHED 1875. The Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1905. PUNISHMENT.

j Punishment begins in the^ " wild I justice "of revenge—in the desire of the natural man to make the person who has hurt him fell the same pain as he has inflicted. The State, if it was to survive, had to subordinate private revenge to the public good; it checked it in two ways—it fixed a tariff for compensation for life and limb, and forced the injured party to accept-, it; it denounced pains and | [penalties against the wrong-doer, and ! ito deter crime it stopped at no form of punishment, however cruel. Id is HBmarkable to note the change which is passing over us in this respect. The old idea of punishment is fading away like a dissolving view, the idea of regenerating thie criminal is every day coming out with greater distinctness. The change is illustrated in many ways; in the ameliorations, for example, of our prison system. Prisons, from being the dungeons of the feudal castle or the fever dens of later times, have become the healthiest places in the world; prisoners are no longer herded together, but carefully classified and separated, sex and sex, the young and the old, tbe novice in crime and the professional. The prisoner is taught a trade to qualify him for earning an honest livelihood. Every effort is made when he comes out to rescue him from evil associations. In all this it is the regeneration of the criminal which is paramount -the idea of punishment has receded into the background. The change is illustrated in another rather curious way. There,is often a popular cuti cry for greater uniformity of punishment ; the inequality of sentence is constantly being criticised severely by the Press; but this very inequality is of the essence of tbe new penology —which is, as M. Saleiiles, one of the best-known exponents, has put it—to fit the punishment to the particular form of the offender's criminality, to his individuality, his nationality, his idiosyncrasies, just as the doctor administers his physic according to the patient's particular complaint.