IMINISHED DRUNKENNESS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15907, 20 August 1923, Page 4

IMINISHED DRUNKENNESS.

je annual report of the Commisner of Police may be a very eking document in so far as it a record of the sins of the comnity during the past year, but iff so those who look on the bright e of things may find in it a satdsstory feature (says the Otago Times). This is discovered by * of the invaluable method of comusori. Relatively there is no ise for despondency in the latest •onicle,' since, whereas the numof offences reported to the police filETt showed' an increase of 445 t the number reported in 1920. -figure for 1922, inflated though n numb"’* of unimtant convictions for breaches of

the Arms Act, was less by 1552 than that for 1921. The year 1915, be it added, was the year of the Dominion’s most unenviable record, and the vear 1914 ran it close. A distinct shrinkage however, in the proportion of offences to the population in 1922 is all to the good. There has been some increase in crimes such as theft from dwellings, housebreaking, and burglary, but the outstanding feature of the latest report is the disclosure of a considerable decrease in the number of cases of drunkenness as compared with the number for the previous 12 months. Offenders of this kind occupy much more of tne time of the police force in tne Wellington an.a Auckland districts than they do in the South Island districts. The record of the Dunedin district continues to be more favourable in a degree that is by no means to he explained on a population basis. The decrease in drunkenness in the Dominion which is revealed by the latest figures-may, broadly considered, be accepted as fresh evidence in support of the view that the country .is becoming increaisingly sober. Shocking cases of excessive indulgence in liquor crop up every now and again, even in Dunedin —as witness the evidence a't the inquest held on Monday —but the people, taken as a whole, are not fairly open to condemnation on the score of insobriety and may he fairly credited with appreciating in an increasing measure the virtues of temperance. It may be conceded that the improvement in the figures for drunkenness last .year was to some extent i due to the increased price of spirits and to the fact that the times were not so good as they had been. Still, the decrease of 2263 in the number of charges for drunkenness in 1922 as compared with 1921 means that the record is the most faourable furnished in the last 23 years. There has been a downward tendency from 1916. but for every person arrested £jor drunkenness in New Zealand last j year two were arrested in 1914 and 1915. -