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PART IN.I.GENERAL PROVISIONS AS TO THE PUNISHMENT AND TREATMENT OF OFFENDERS

N.I.Punishment generally

1Abolition of penal servitude, hard labour and prison divisions.N.I.

(1)No person shall be sentenced by a court to penal servitude; and every enactment which operates to empower a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case shall operate so as to empower that court to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of this Act.

(2)No person shall be sentenced by a court to imprisonment with hard labour; and every enactment which operates to empower a court to pass a sentence of imprisonment with hard labour in any case shall operate so as to empower that court to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the term for which a sentence of imprisonment with hard labour could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of this Act; and so far as any enactment in force immediately before the commencement of this Act requires or permits prisoners to be kept to hard labour it shall cease to have effect and accordingly the words “with or without hard labour” wherever occurring in any enactment prescribing the punishment for an offence are hereby repealed.

(3)So far as any enactment in force immediately before the commencement of this Act provides that a person sentenced to imprisonment or committed to prison is or may be directed to be treated as an offender of a particular division, or to be placed in a separate division, it shall cease to have effect.