Book Review: Crime in New Zealand
| Author | Stanley W. Johnston |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486586800100309 |
| Published date | 01 September 1968 |
| Date | 01 September 1968 |
AUST. &N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (1968): 1, 3 187
learned, patient, just, clear-sighted, inde-
pendent and incorruptible. He was, too,
an administrator and public servant of
rare
capacity and vision. Above all, he was
a man of noble qualities whose integrity
and unsentimental gentleness of nature set
him
apart
in a crude, self-seeking society
riddled by greed, spitefulness and intrigue.
It has taken
far
too long for his work and
his character to be given the recognition
they justly deserve. Happily, Dr. Currey's
admirably complete biography has ensured
that
justice delayed is not justice denied.
JOHN, V. BAlRRY.
Crime in New Zealand, N.Z. Justice Dept.,
Govt. Printer, Wellington, 1968, 417 pages,
$4.50.
IN HIS latest work,
"Law
and the Social
Sciences" (U. of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis, 1966, pages 21-24), Julius
Stone spoke of
the
century-old "s-logan
'A Ministry of
Justice'"
as intended to
be a "branch of government which should
concern itself, not merely with
the
ongoing
administration of
the
law, but with con-
stant
reassessment of its adequacy for
the
time and place,
the
pinpointing of
the
failures of justice and social policy, and
the
prescription of remedies." He felt
the
time was
now
past
for such a com-
prehensive ministry of justice: "common-
law
countries have
not
and
are
not likely
to
centralize"
the
tasks
of constructive
lawyership in such aministry. The need,
he thought, might be met through centres
of legal research widely based in
the
truths
of social science and philosophy.
Perhaps Stone's judgment was deter-
mined by his experience of federal
structures, in which every government
pretends to some sovereignty and no
government
takes
a final responsibility.
If so, then a
unitary
government as in
New Zealand is accustomed to taking a
more comprehensive responsibility
than
any
government does in a federation. In
any
event New Zealand, though ranking
after
New South Wales and Victoria in
population, is
the
most articulate State
of the ex-union in justifying its criminal
policy, and bids fair to prove Stone wrong.
Its Justice Department's annual reports
do still close with
the
unreformed pre-1760
year
on March 31. But New Zealand was-
the
setting for Samuel Butler's classic
(despite the coquettish disclaimer in the
work under review
that
Erewhon "has
no counterpart in
the
real world so far
as
our
evidence goes"); in Tappan one
discovers
that
New Zealand introduced
salaried probation officers as early as- 1886;
and
the
Justice Department has recently
published pamphlets on penal policy.
Now Dr. John L. Robson, secretary of
the department, has edited "Crime in New
Zealand," first Australasian echo
of
the
U.S. President's recent "Challenge of
Crime in a Free Society". It has chapters
on murder, suicide (no longer a crime),
sex offenders (including cases for and
against legalizing homosexuality, and a
somewhat
testy
account of treatment),
assault (including manslaughter), corporal
punishment, female offending, cruelty to
children, abortion (an "ugly trade" involv-
ing the death of
"an
innocent human
being, namely
the
unborn child"), dis-
honesty,
petty
offending, and a chapter
on bail and remand. There is a
bibliography at the end of each chapter,
and an index.
The book includes studies of the reason-
ing which led New Zealand to abandon
both capital and corporal
punishment-
though tne Crimes Act still preserves
the
right of schoolmasters to use physical
punishment. In debating the hanging
abolition bill in 1961, Justice Minister
J. R. Hanan, who writes the foreword to
this work, said
that
"if this House decides
in favour of abolishing
the
death penalty,
I . propose to move
the
omission . . . of
the
diminished responsibility clause". That
was a wise move, since
the
function of
the
defence of diminished responsibility
was to permit the
jury
to convict without
imposing the death sentence; and in fact
New Zealand law is
today
free of
that
defence.
The chapter on cruelty to children is a
valuable addition to
the
Victoria, Govern-
ment's study of this subject last year. It
lists infanticide as relating to children,
though again it is really a defence whereby
the
mother avoids
the
death sentence
rather
than being a protection for the
child, and there seems no longer to be
any
point in retaining
the
provision. The
defence is made
out
by showing mental
disturbance following parturition or
lactation. Most States therefore limit its
operation
to
ayear from birth; but New
Zealand extends it for up to
ten
years.
Perhaps
what
motivated
that
extraordinary
extension was
the
fact
that
women
are
more prone than men to homicidal
depression
(J.
C. Batt, "Homicidal
Incidence in the Depressive Psychoses,"
J. of Mental ScL, 94, 782, 1948), and
children
are
convenient victims. But is
that
tendency due to
the
experience of
motherhood?
The book concedes prejudicial law
enforcement according to sex. "Females
probably enjoy considerably more pro-
tection from their families, their
employers, and the community at large."
Shoplifting, apredominantly female
activity, is often
not
reported. (Stores
act
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