Punishment in Paradise
Sir: I am prompted to write to you by Sir Frederick Lawton's article in your issue of 27 February (Prison is not enough').
Between the spring of 1953 and June 1960 I was the salaried secretary of a quan-
go called the Advisory Committee on the Treatment of Offenders in the Colonies. In those years there were between 40 and 50 overseas territories with which we were concerned. The members included several well-known reformers, retired judges, prison commissioners and specialists of var- ious kinds. Some of the members were usu- ally on tour, and I made a tour of all the British territories in the Caribbean and in certain African and Indian Ocean territo- ries also. It was my job to keep the commit- tee informed about crime statistics and the operation of all the available methods of dealing with offenders, and to draft all the circular dispatches to colonial governors, administrators and other authorities about these subjects.
It was noticeable that, throughout the overseas territories, the number of convict- ed offenders of all kinds was broadly pro- portional to the material standards of living of the bulk of the populations of the vari- ous countries. The poorer and simpler the modus vivendi of the people, the fewer the crimes. In most of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, where there was virtually nothifig to steal, the majority of the few inmates of the local lock-ups would be men who, the worse off for palm wine, had beaten their womenfolk with more than customary severity.
Only in a very few instances could one say with any confidence that any particular `treatment' of offenders had been notice- ably successful. As for corporal punish- ment, it was retained in some territories but abolished in many of the others. There was no convincing evidence that success went either to the retentionists or the abolition- ists. The same must be said of capital pun- ishment.
Since the nature of treatment seems to have had such little impact upon the inci- dence of crime, relatively 'humane' meth- ods may as well be followed. The difficulty is to deal with the craving for retribution, which affects us all.
Richard Terrell,
7 Chester Court, Lissenden Gardens, London NW5
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