THE H.B. TRIBUNE. FRIDAY. SEPTEMBER 22 1922. CRIME IN NEW SOUTH WALES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 239, 22 September 1922, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. FRIDAY. SEPTEMBER 22 1922. CRIME IN NEW SOUTH WALES

Remarks that have fallen from the bench of both upper and lower courts in Auckland clearly indicate that our magistrates and judges are fully alive to the danger of an influx of the Australian criminal class into the Dominion. Now, simultaneously with the issue of the annual report from the Minister in charge of our own Prisons Department, which is of a distinctly encouraging character so far, at any rate, as the reformative aspect is concerned, we have from Sydney press extracts from and comment upon the annual report of the New South Wales Police Department. This is of quite as definitely- a disturbing nature, and points to the need for continual vigilance on the part of our authorities in order to exclude from the Dominion any inflow of Sydney’s distinctive criminal class. We have, since the war, ourselves developed quite a notable increase in crimes involving personal violence and disregard for the rights of property without the introduction of any aggravating element from abroad. Particularly noticeable is the ready resort to firearms which has dharadterised the worst forms of crime in this Dominion, but it has evidently not reached the pitch to which it is said to have attained in the Mother State of the Commonwealth, and particularly, almost of course, in the metropolitan area. In this connection, too, it is said to be one of the most unsatisfactory and disquieting aspects of the record that not only' is the number of juvenile offenders very much greater than ever before, but the offences charged against them are of much graver character. We are not ourselves without indications of a like kind, and here, as there, sociologists are generally inclined to attribute this ominous trend very largely to the marked relaxation of parental control and the gradual, almost rapid, disappearance of real "home life"’ from among the mass of the people. To this is added the undoubtedly evil effect which much of the public entertainment provided, and especially by a large number of the pic-, ture-palaces, has upon the juvenile and adolescent mind, while the lack of a sense of parental responsibility and influence is obvious from the fact that children are permitted to attend such exhibitions. Returning to the question of the increase in crime in the senior Australian State, and to the more serious character which it has assumed, one of the Sydney papers says that no official report was needed to apprise the citizens of these deplorable facts. Every clay, it says, he learns of it from his newspaper. He has noted also that certain classes of crime are especially common. One of these is the burglary jn which the burglar threatens his

victim with firearms and often uses them. This is said to be, even in Australia, quite a novel phenomenon ; in the past the burglar, as a yule, contented himself with less lethal weapons. The law, which like our own, requires the owner of firearms to procure a license from the police may to some extent have curbed the enterprise of these criminals, but clearly the man who is prepared to shoot down a householder or a policeman in cold blood is not the sort to concern himself greatly about the regulations. In this respect, too, we in New Zealand are far from being without unaccustomed manifestations of the like kind. There are, however, phases of criminal development from which Sydney suffers, but from which our own cities have hitherto happily managed to keep themselves free. Of the first of these the same Sydney contemporary says that there they are constantly hearing of vendettas in the underworld, both of Sydney and of Melbourne, which culminate in homicide or aggravated assault. There have been many of these sordid affairs of late, and very unedifying they are. "But,” says the Sydney paper, “the average citizen will incline to the view that if we must have a criminal class which will stop at nothing, it is better that its members should devote their energies to ‘doing each other in’ rather than to harming inoffensive citizens.” But this is, at best, but a poor consolation. Of still more serious import is the description that is given of the revival of “push” violence involving cowardly and brutal attacks upon the police. Thirty years ago or more bands of hooligans infested certain areas of the city and made the policeman’s work difficult and highly dangerous. These were stamped out by the infliction of drastic penalties, but the evil has re appeared in a slightly different form. Every week almost occurs an ugly riot in which policemen are seriously injured. “It usually begins in the attempt to arrest someone for a more or less heinous offence. His comrades come to his rescue and help him to resist. A large crowd collects and watches proceedings with callous indifference. The policeman who may have been reinforeed by another from an adjoining beat, is overwhelmed by this pack of jackals. He is battered with boots, blue metal, and broken bottles. Rarely have any of the bystanders the impulse or the pluck to come to his help, or even to summon aid.” As more than one recent Supreme Court prosecution attest, our own police are now frequently exposed to risks which, until late years, were quite exceptional. But, fortunately for them and for the community, they have as yet had but little to fear from organised gangs such as the Sydney “pushes.” It is to be hoped that any indication of a tendency to like formations in the Dominion will be met with effectively deterrent punishment. As for the Australian criminal generally, it might, not be a bad thing if it were an acknowledged and widely published principle in dealing out penalties that, when convicted here, he should be given “a little bit extra,” just “pour encourager les autres” to stay away from our shores.