22491-1911-Supplementary-Bills-read-a-first-time--Harbour-of-Refuge-Amendment — Page 65

138

Ordinance No. 4 of 1886, sections 4, 19 (1).

*

No. 1 of 1887, section 7.

No. 3 of 1888, sections 31 (2), 53,

PART IV.

Sections of Ordinances which are amended by the repea! of the following words.

Ordinance No. 1 of 1844, in section 24, the words

" and not less then seven years".

**

"

No. 1 of 1868, in sertions 2 (2), 3 (2),

and 4, the words from “and not

35

Jess' to the end of the sections res-

pectively;

and in section 5, the words from "and not less" to "hard labour”.

No. 3 of 1868, in section 3, the words

"or for any terin* to the end of the section;

and in section 8 (2), the words from “with or without bard" to the cud of the section,

1 of 1875, in section 9, the words from

66 or to imprisonment" to the end of the section.

Objects and Heusons,

The object of this Ordinance is to bring the law of the Colony on the subject of punishments into lius with the law of England. It accomplishes this first, by abolishing minimum penalties, and thus gives the Judge the power of dealing leniently with cases which deserve to be so

treated.

The Ordinance also does away with the confusion and redundancy of language which now exist in the penalty clauses of the Criminal Laws of the Colony. In the English Acts, from which our laws have been copied, there were alternative penalties provided of penal servitude for a maximum and minimum term (which was usually three years), and imprisonment with or without hard labour for not more than two years. The Criminal Law Ordinances, as originally passed, followed this form of alternative pen- alty. By Ordinance No. 3 of 1887, penal servitude was abolished, and imprisonment with hard labour substituted for it. In the Ordinances as they appear in the Revised Edition, "imprisonment with hard labour" has been sub- stituted for "penal servitude"; but no further change was made, with the result, as in the "example" given in s. 7, that the alternatives became "imprisonment with hard labour for not more than 14 and not less than 3 years and imprisonment with or without hard labour for not more than 2 years". This is meningless and the Or- dinance eliminates the second alternative. It should be noted that the penalty of “ imprisonment with or without hard labour” as an alternative to penal servitude has been eliminated in Eugland, but by a different process,

25

The use of "examples" is based on Indian legislation, Inter- and due recognition of it will be made in the new pretation Ordinance" now being drafted.

A further effective change is made by making the pen- alty of imprisonment always subject to the discretionary "with or without hard labour" (as it is in fact in the majority of cases) unless any Ordinance expressly provides otherwise. This is made to apply to future enactments, and will make the drafting of Ordinances uniform.

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