YOUTHFUL LAWBREAKERS.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1415, 13 October 1923, Page 7

YOUTHFUL LAWBREAKERS.

NUMBER STEADILY INCREASING. While it is decidedly distressing to. notice that an average of 200 young New Zealanders are committed to prison every year, there is room lor optimism in the knowledge that juvenile crime is steadily on the decrease. Prominence given to an occasional spectacular exploit by an immature imitator of Bill Sykes has led more than one well-intentioned reformer to denounce the alleged alarming increase of crime among juveniles, but the official justice statistics for 1922 show that we are, in this important respect, at least, “getting better and better every day.” The section of the Government Statistician’s statistics dealing with juvenile offenders, those under the age of 16 years, shows that 1254 cases were before Magistrate’s Courts during the year, as compared with 1391 in 1921. Not only was the number of charges the lowest for many years, but the number of convictions, including those in which the offenders were discharged after magisterial admonition, without entry of conviction, was only 1145, as compared with the average of 1447 in the previous five years. Again, for the first time for a long period, there was no case of a juvenile offender being committed to the Supreme Court for trial or sentence. These comparisons indicate that juvenile crime is actually decreasing, and this is confirmed by examining the proportions of offenders to the total population. Thus. 1915 and 1916 the number of children charged with offences was equivalent, to 15 per 10,000 of population; the rate was 14 in the next two years, and 16 in 1919. But in 1920 it fell to 13, in 1921 to 11, and in 1922 to 10. In respect of crime among youthful offenders the Controller-General of Prisons has stated that they “continue to increase.” the reference being to New Zealand born prisoners between the ages of 15 and 25 years received in prisons. Last year there were 340 of this class as against 214 in the previous year, and 226 in 1920. Certainly these numbers are high, but except the first of them, not exceptionally so, for in the last 20 years they have often been exceeded though the population was then smaller. If the statistics of New Zealand born prisoners are examined, it will be found that in the five years 1903-7, 1469 were under 25 years of age, or 33 per cent, of the total prison recepti6ns; in 1908-12, the number was 1395, or 26 per cent; in 1913-17, it was 1092, or 20 per cent; while the last five years show a total of 1116, or 26 per cent., the same proportion as in the pre-war period.