GRIME AND THE FILMS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20024, 4 September 1930, Page 14

GRIME AND THE FILMS.

SYDNEY POLICE VEBW. (mox ota oww ooußsroxnnr.) SYDNEY, August 28. One of the moat interesting views on the question u to whether the prevailing poverty has been responsible for an increase in crime and criminals in Sydnev hj« been . expressed by the Commissioner of Police (Mr«Childs). He gives a very emphatic "No." "It is not correct to say that we' have more 'new 4 criminals than usual," he said. "Any increase in crime should be traced, not to the depression, but to the influence of moving pictures in the past. There used to be many pictures which showed the gangster of the pieoe as quite a fine fellow, and some <rf them even slv>wpd his methods, giving valuable, hints to potential criminals in Aostra-' lia. There are not so many such pictures now, but I think that the censor s scissors should bo used ruthlessly upon films which tend to glorify the criminals. "I do not think that we can blame the economic depression for turning honest men to criminals. It may be true that it has driven some men to petty theft—when a lobster is stolen from a fish shop or a tin of salmon from the grocer's. It may turn outthat the thief was driven to it by hard times. In such cases, however, as the recent bus hold-up or the Mudgee mail robbery, the men responsible were not previously respectable citizens, who baa been driven to crime by unemployment or shortage of money. Those were professional crimwho had had a good grounding in -crime before they undertook those jobs.

~ The man who is hardest hit by the depression, and who stoops to dishonesty is not the man to commit a burglary or stoop to shopbreaking."