Book Review: Prisons

Published date01 December 1968
AuthorJ. A. Morony
Date01 December 1968
DOI10.1177/000486586800100411
Subject MatterBook Reviews
AUST. &N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (1968):
1.4
257
made by the Commission.
This is an informative and stimulating
book and can be recommended not only
to students in the social sciences
but
to
social administrators and policy
...
makers as
well.
MICHELINE
DEWDNEY.
School of Sociology.
University of New South Wales.
Sir
Charles Lowe
--
ABiographical
Memoir, M. Rosenthal, Angus &Robertson
Ltd., Sydney, 1968, $5.25.
THIS is an account of
the
career of a
lawyer who from humble beginnings
became aJudge of
the
Supreme Court of
Victoria, Chancellor of the University of
Melbourne, and on occasions acted as
Governor of Victoria. It is a success story
and might well be sub
...
titled. "From Log
Cabin to Government House".
Charles Lowe practised at the Bar from
1906 until he was appointed to the Bench
in 1927, an appointment which he resigned
early in 1964
at
the
age of 84.
Readers of this Journal will be interested
to discover
what
the book discloses of his
views on criminology. These
are
best
shown by the following extracts:
"He had never been able to appreciate
the
view
that
aperson who was punished
in the criminal court should be treated
simply as a subject for reform. It
seemed to him
that
one of the elements
of punishment was punishment for
the
act
committed-something
which
the
person himself had to suffer. He did not,
by any means, disregard
the
reformative
aspect of punishment. He fully approved
of it, especially in
the
case of young
people. However, he still thought there
was, as well, a case for due punishment
to be suffered by a person who had
inflicted wrong on another."
On the defence of insanity:
"Lowe was inclined to regard much of
what
was submitted by medical experts
(who usually contradicted one another)
as so much rationalising, a legal
strata
...
gem devised for the purpose of obtain
...
ing the acquittal of the accused of
the
crime he had committed. Whatever he
might.
have thought later, in the early
years he had little time for psychiatric
argument and his scepticism was shared
by most of his colleagues. But then, of
course, it
was
not so very long ago
that
responsible medical opinion felt the same
way,"
He believed in capital punishment for
murder; though the sentence should be
commuted in appropriate cases:
"He would still
carry
out
the
death sen
...
tence in a number of special cases,
especially where
the
murder was pre
...
meditated and planned. He included
amongst these long-continued poisoning
which was very deliberate and which
ultimately killed
the
victim."
He thought also
that
where acriminal
killed an officer of
the
law, a constable in
the
execution of his duty,
or
awarder
trying to prevent acriminal escaping, these
would all. be proper cases for carrying out
the
sentence where averdict of guilty had
been returned . . . He regarded capital
punishment as a deterrent. He was not
at all convinced by
the
argument
that
statistics indicated
that
murders were no
greater where capital punishment was
abolished than where -capital punishment
prevailed. Statistical arguments, in his
view, had to be looked at very carefully;
in most cases, he thought the use made
of them to be fallacious.
People only had to look into their own
minds and ask themselves
what
effect
the
threat
of capital punishment would have
on them; they would soon appreciate
that
the
deterrent effect
was
very
real. Under-
ground organisations and rebel movements
which executed those
who
betrayed them
obviously thought
that
their action was
"a. deterrent to others".
E. G. COPPEL,
Q.C.,
Melbourne.
Prisons, Michael Wolff, Eyre &Spottis-
woode, London, 1967, 303 pp., $7.40.
MR. WOLFF set himself the task of
presenting "a factual unvarnished account
of what was seen through the eyes of an
independent observer - shorn of all
prejudices and most emotion".
It is a sine qua non
that
prisons are
not pleasant places - I doubt if they were
ever intended to be - and in general their
occupants
are
not a particularly pre-
possessing group, although
the
latter
generalisation could justifiably be criti
...
cised. In fact,
~
as an indication of Mr.
Wolff's unemotionality Imake reference
to one comment only which seems to
transcend
the
limitations of good report-
ing: In discussing
the
retaking of escapees,
the
author writes, "these accusations (of
beatings-up)
are
rarely proved in court
and a local jury is usually satisfied
that
'no prison officer ever uses more violence
than
is considered necessary to apprehend
arunaway. How much violence that
entails is anybody's guess". (The italics
are
the reviewer's.) It would be known
to most readers
that
escapees
are
seldoDQ
retaken by prison officers anyway.
Mr. Wolff very ,properly proffers com-
ment in each of his well designed sections
and a critique of the book as a whole

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