THE ROOT OF CRIME

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 105, 31 October 1939, Page 10

THE ROOT OF CRIME

HUMAN NATURE

ADDRESS TO A GRAND JURY

NOT JUST ECONOMICS

(By Telegraph— Press Association.) INVERCARGILL, This Day. Opening the quarterly session of the Supreme Court, his Honour Mr.; Justice Ostler in his address to the Grand Jury said: —

"It is desirable that all people in this country should take an intelligent interest in, and form sound opinions on, the administration of criminal law. Many sincere people hold the belief that crime is purely a medical question, and if the treatment of criminals is handed over to psychiatrists they could be cured of the tendency to crime. Judging by recent public utterances, others consider that though crime is partly a medical question, it is mostly economic, and when the present economic system has been changed crime will disappear, and the police can be disbanded.

"It is not so simple as that. No doubt a certain proportion of crime is due to mental defect. In some cases— nbt many—medical science is able to do something to help such to become normal citizens. The great majority appear to be of normal intelligence; many are above normal, but the moral sense is blunted. How could a change in the economic and political system cure them? For over twenty years Russia has enjoyed an extreme form of socialistic government, but despite the fact that it has a most severe criminal code it is unable to abolish crime. Indeed, recent history makes it plain that some of her most coldblooded and ruthless criminals have obtained supreme power in. the State. What could be more criminal than their conduct in Poland? There is an element of truth in the assertion that economic hardship tends to increase crime, especially against property, yet it persists when there is no hardship. It is surely illusory to suggest that crime will disappear if the present economic system is swept away and the State becomes the sole owner of all property and sole controller of the means of production and distribution. "Until human nature is changed society will always have the criminal as a social problem. He will crop up in all classes, and not come only from the children of the poor."