‘Alarm’ About Violence

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32050, 26 July 1969, Page 17

‘Alarm’ About Violence

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 25. Assaulters should be made to meet the full cost of the injuries of their victims, if necessary support them for life, and be ordered to work in a casualty ward handling assault cases, the secretary of the Police Association, Mr D. C. Lee, said in Wellington this week.

He said this would be one step toward curbing the increase in violent crimes. Court sentences along these lines had been used in some Canadian provinces and had proved successful, he said. The thought of such a penalty would encourage people to think before injuring someone. •

“I don’t mean this treatment for the vicious type. Those people who, while sober, would push a broken bottle into someone’s face

should be locked up. They’re past reform,” Mr Lee said. But the main contribution toward halting assaults lay with the man in the street.

"The New Zealand public is an apathetic mob and, until it is heartily sick of being assaulted, reformers won’t be told where to get off. And the time is approaching. The people are alarmed at the increase in violence.

“We’ve got to try reform but the reconviction figures show it hasn’t been successful,” Mr Lee said. Half of today’s young children were not immoral but amoral, with no standard but their own. Mr Lee said he would like to see some steps taken to force parents to teach children morals and a standard of behaviour.

“Teachers don’t use physical discipline any more. When they did parents charged them with assault. Now they’re screaming ‘Bring back the birch’.’’ The solution to the increasing crime rate was for parents to bring up children with respect for authority

land the rights of other people. There was only one way to enforce this, by ordering parents to pay restitution.

“Courts have power to order parental restitution, but at the moment it is largely unenforceable,” Mr Lee said.

Children could leave home at 17, but were not adults until they turned 21. Parents should be held responsible for their children until they turned 19.

It was also time that the names and photographs of children convicted in children’s courts were published, so that the public knew who committed crimes, he said.