CAUSE OF CRIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 56, 8 March 1941, Page 10

CAUSE OF CRIME.

YOUNG DELINQUENTS.

Loss Of Sense Of Security Blamed For Increase.

rnlte<l rrms Association.—Copyricht

LONDON". Mar. 7.

"The Times" gives prominence to a speech hv Mr. Watson Bovce. probation officer, at tlft Sonthwark Juvenile Court. He said conditions arising from the war had greatly accentuated .juvenile delinquency anil attributed the increase among the younger London groups, aged from eight to fourteen, to the loss of the sense of security. Destruction and sudden death had become almost commonplace. Life was *. ' or to-day, for to-morrow might not come. Fathers, uncles -and brothers were "nd perhaps would not return, said Mr. Bovce. Mothers were har.l--worked and depressed. Mr. Bovce said his unofficial view was that i'f nonevacuation was the cause of the trouble there should be evacuation. Another cause of delinquencv anion" older children was a wild 'urge, a struggle for expression, particularly in the male. He had known adolescents m whom the urge was so irresistible that it drove them out in the wildest air raids seeking a safety valve, resulting, perhaps, in supreme acts of bravery or depravity. _Mr. Bovce said he knew a boy, agwl 15. who hurgled a number of shops. He said that day after day he went to work in the dark, and returned home in the dark and felt he would burst or go mad. He defied his mother and went out in air raids from sheer want of excitement. The b»y burgled a tailor's shop and felt happy. "I did not want clothes." be said. Such stories could be multiplied many times. There wa« another new problem. At J result of the wages of adolescents, from £3 to £6 a week, giving boys too much to spend, drunkenness wis increasing. The wages of these yon n" workers must conic down, saM Mr Boyce who urged that their labour should ba conscripted equally with adults, not only for their present good but to save them from thr crash after the war.