THE CRIME WAVE

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3183, 28 May 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE CRIME WAVE

INFLUENCES LURE BOYS ON. THE REAL CULPRITS EXPOSED. Two former Home Secretaries in England, Mr J. R. Clynes and Mr Edward Shortt, K.C. (now the Film Censor), recently discussed the increase in crime as revealed in the most recent Home Office statistics. Mr Shortt considers that the boy of to-day is no more inclined towards crime as a career than was the boy of sixty years ago. “In my own boyhood in the seventies,” he said, “ there were penny and threepenny ‘ bloods ’ which glorified crime and criminals every bit as much as anything written to-day. The only difference between the boy of to-day and that of sixty years ago is that the modern boy is being educated on lines that tend more to develop the spirit of adventure. “He goes in more for sport, for instance, and after he leaves school the sporting instinct remains strongly developed in him. It wants an "outlet in adventure. Much of modern juvenile crime, I am convinced, is merely the spirit of adventure seeking an outlet. It is stupid to talk of there being a ‘ wave ’ of crime.” THE REAL VILLAINS. The real villain of the piece, . according to Mr Shortt, is the receiver of, stolen goods. “If it were not for the receiver,” he declared, “ the criminal’s greatest incentive would be gone. The receiver, to my mind, is the worst type of criminal. He is cold-blooded, calculating, and determined. He should be treated as we treat our lunatics. No one would thmk of sentencing a dangerous lunatic to three years’ detention and then liberating him; yet that is what we do to receivers of stolen goods. “ The one way to treat such people and they are the real enemies of society—is to sentence them to some form of detention for life. It is by rooting out receivers of stolen goods that we shall come nearest to a solution of the ‘smash-and-grab’ problem and stamp out most the burg larv and larceny of to-day.” Mr Clynes said: “ The real problem of the police to-day is that they are dealing not with an individual but with an organisation; where, formerly, they had only one mind to deal with, they now have a dozen. The gang system, so prevalent to-day, makes the job of crime detection an extremely difficult one, and complicates it almost out of all recognition.” POLICE’S WASTED TIME. It is Mr Clynes’ strong belief that, 1 on the preventive side of the problem a large amount of the average policeman’s time is wasted on such things as controlling traffic. Traffic control,” he said, “ is a highly-special-ised business, but there is no reason why it should not be carried out by a corps of men specially trained for the purpose. This would leave the policeman free to pursue his proper task, which, after all, is that oi preventing crime.” Both Mr Clynes and Mr Shortt are agreed that the new type of criminal is being treated too leniently. There is,” slid Mr Clynes, “ a need for longer and severer sentences for this certain class of criminal who has wilfully cut himself away from all social and civic protection. Police couro standards of justice and punishment have failed to keep pace with organised crime, for it is organised crime on a new and different scale with which the authorities are faced todaV “ What has to be impressed on the mind of the criminal,” said Mr Shortt, “is the knowledge that once he is caught there will be no escape. from a punishment that will fit the dime and fit it adequately.”