NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY With which is incorporated the NORTHERN MAIL DAILY FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 1920. CRIME.

Northern Advocate, 4 June 1920, Page 2

NORTHERN AD VOCATE DAILY With which is incorporated the NORTHERN MAIL DAILY

FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 1920. CRIME.

Registered for transmission through the post as a newspaper.

Latterly there appears to be a recrudescence of serious crime in various parts of the Dominion. Whether this is an aftermath of the war or whether merely incidental it is very difficult to tell. Quite probably, however, it may have an effect on the native which will become the compelling force when wrong is contemplated. In fact, anyone may become so inured to the sights of bloodshed in war as to be less susceptible to all the horrors and ghastliness of murder. However, no one can for certainly say what has given rise to the increase in this kind of crime, and it becomes the solemn duty of everyone to do his or her utmost to assist in its elimination. In this the jury plays a most important part, for the responsibility of punishment or acquittal rests entirely upon its findings. His Honour, Chief Justice Sir Robert .Stout, eommeimng on the jurymen's work recently, said:

"Juries should be careful in the the administration of justice, and should see that feelings of mercy, which are not mercy either to the criminal or the community, did not influence them to bring in an acquittal where the evidence was clear. They should steadily but humanely carry out their duties and they would find that crime would decline in their district. He had always found that in a district where any species of crime was treated lightly that class of crime would increase. Crime, if allowed to-be treated lightly, would increase. Jurymen, for the sake of the community and their own children, ought to sec that the law was carefully and humanely administered, and by doing that crime would decline. If it were possible to people to reflect that a prison was not a place of horror but in truth an ethical hospital, they would realise the task before them in [• trying to reduce crime."

The last portion of his statement, namely, that a prison was in truth an ethical hospital, is significant. Unfortunately, however, those committed to the prison are usually too old and too set to respond to such ethics and in a great number of cases all effort of this kind has proved, in vain. Much more effective would bo training in rightdoing and in the true.'purpose, of life by the parent, both before and after birth, and while the child is passing through the years of ready and lasting assimilation. Parents nowadays do not give up to the. training of their children that time and attentioon to which, as important units-to-be of an Empire, they are entitled. Wrong-doing, carefully checked in the proper manner at the proper time and by the proper person, not necessarily by commitment to confinement or subjection to lash, will in tho course of a few generations, largely reduce the need for tho ethical hsopitnh The following excerpt taken from an exchange on "Heredity and Environment" has an important bearing on the training of the child:—

Taken from the cradle and reared by brutes, a child would be scarcely human. Taken straight from the cradle and brought up amongst savages, the child must be a savage. Taken straight from the cradle and brought up amongst thieves, the child must be a thief. Every child is bora destitute of knowledge, and every child is born with tendencies . that may make for evil or knowledge. And the men and women amongst whom the child is born and roared are tho sole means by which his tendencies may be restrained from evil and developed for good. Therefore the child's character, his development for good or evil, deponds upon his treatment by his fellow-creatures. His tendencies depend on his ancestors—that is to say, a child must inevitably grow up and become thp,t which his ancestors and his fellowcreatures make him. And it can be said a man is a creature- of "heredity and environment." He is what he is made by a certain kind of environment, acting upon a certain kind of heredity. This study of environment and heredity demonstrates the tremendous influences exercised in the moulding of a boy's character, • but, unfortunately, few people give it serious consideration. Upon parents devolves the sacred duty of seeing that their children aro subjected to only thoso influences which make for honourable man and womanhood, and to do this thoy must, of j course, give up to their children a great ] deal of the time Hint they now spend ,on their own personal pleasures. In i other words, they must cultivate the ' Love for Home. 1