America and Crime.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19195, 29 December 1927, Page 6

America and Crime.

To most New Zealanders, as to most people in British countries, the news about the Los Angeles kidnapping and murder is of interest chiefly, if not wholly, for its illustration of the American attitude toAvards crime. It is impossible to believe that a cruel and unusual murder of the same kind would in Britain have such surprising aftereffects as this one. The British public would be deeply moved and excited, and might have behaved like the public of "Western America up to the arrest of the suspected man. But then there would have fallen a curtain of calm and silence. There certainly would have been no interviewing of the arrested man, no recording of his observations, no news concerning his demeanour, no report of his conduct under " the third "degree," no thought of his possibly being lynched, and no special sitting of any Superior Court to attest the sympathetic co-operation of Justice in the business of giving the people the very best in red and juicy sensation. The stolid British police would simply have kept the man in custody, the machinery of justice would not have tarried or hastened for anybody, and nothing more would have been heard of the case until proceedings began in the Courts. It may seem a little odd that America should grow so excited, and behave in a way so strange and distasteful to the British eye, over one murder, when there are so many in the United States. The truth is, that murder is so common a thing in America that the American people make the most of any which may be very unusual, while it is still so uncommon in Britain that it shocks the Briton into sobriety. During this joyful season we have had from America not only the news of the Los Angeles murder but also a report that the Federal Government is so greatly alarmed by the growth of violent crime that it is taking steps to arrest the breakdown of the law. Crime has become a branch of organised business in 6ome parte of tho United States, amongst which Chicago enjoys special eminence. One sometimes hears of " crime waves " in New Zealand—half a dozen extra burglaries by clumsy criminals—but a "crime wave" in America is a really serious .thing, measured by extra scores of murders and bank robberies, and an increase in the number of criminals operating in high-powered cars armed with machine-guns. The Federal officials ascribe the criminal drift to the too great freedom with which America admits aliens. Some people ascribe it to Prohibition, which, by leading to disrespect for the law, may be as considerable a factor in the growth of American crime as the Prohibitionists say it has been in the growth of American prosperity.