CRIME THEORY.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18015, 6 March 1924, Page 14

CRIME THEORY.

POWER OF SUGGESTION.

(TB,O M OUB OWN COSBSSPOHDEHT.)

SYDNEY, February 28,

Olio of the leading police officers here has just given it as his opinion, that parents should be far more care* fu! than they are as to what they allow children and people of immature years to hear and read. Suggestion, it is believed, has played no small part in tho wave of murder, robbery, and other crime which has recently swept New South Wales. The belief is held that behind the orgy of crime there surely lies some psychological influence, and that the prominence given to the List murder in Victoria, and the eagerness with which the public devoured the details of this tragedy, probably iniluenoed young Batson to make his attack on a picnic party near Albury in New South Wales. The police have almost. innumerable examples of the manner in which ono big crime produces others. There is the notorious Gap, near Sydney Heads, for instance. Ab surely as someone takes the fatal plunge over it, and the papers are filled with details of the tragedy, other cases follow. The police cite the definite case of a young girl who told a wild story of being attacked and brutally treated by a man. The whole thing was a fabrication from end" to end. The evening before the girl had heard her father reading out aloud sueti a case, and it had suggested to the impressionable and imaginative youngster a similar outrage on herself. There is quite a lot of sound and elevating philosophy in the words of one leading detective. "Every day," he says, "we are being directed this way or that by the influence, often unconscious, o? our friends. It should only make us more careful to watch our speech and actions to see that no careless or thoughtless influence for harm should emanate from us." In that there is undoubtedly much wisdom and truth.