AMERICA’S CRIME BILL

Hokitika Guardian, 28 September 1929, Page 8

AMERICA’S CRIME BILL

TERRIBLE RECORD. Crime costs the , United States £2,600,C00,000 yearly. Twelve thousand murders are committed there annually—so times tiie number recorded in Great Britain. Thirty thousand criminals are at large m New York, and 10,000 in Chicago. The annual murder rate in, the United (States has increased 350 per cent since 1900. Thus, while two persons in every 100,000 were murdered in 1900, the proportion is now seven 111 evoi-y 100,000. These facts are supplied by Mr Wade Ellis, former Assistant Attorney-General of the United States, and a member of the American Bar Association’s prime commission. According to him the chief offenders are foreign-born citizens and negroes (writes the New York correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph).

As to the causes of crime unexampled in the history of civilisation,, the report cites first America’s tremendous . growth in wealth, a growth with commenced 30 years ago, and reached its climax after the war. “This has made for wastefulness, extravagance, and display-, and tempted the weak to the acquisition of easy money.” The multiciplicity of jlaws has so increased the sum total of crimes. As examples of inventions which made crime easier to accomplish and provided greater facilities for escape, Mr Ellis mentions the motor car, the automatic pistol, the machjne-gun, the smoke screen, and the aeroplane.” In many of America’s larger cities, Mr Ellis reports, there is a political and sometimes a financial partnership, between the underworld and the very officials who have sworn to protect the lives and property of law abiding citizens. The long delays in bringing criminals to trial and the technicalities which have grown up round the administration of justice had clogged the courts and made a farce of the punishment of evil-cloers. Finally, Mr Ellis declares, the most important of all causes of crime is that the great body of citizens have been so busy in amassing wealth and giving their leisure to frivolity that they “have no inclination to consider seriously the dangers threatening the country.”