The Wanganui Chronicle THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1931. LAWLESSNESS AND UNEMPLOYMENT.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 244, 15 October 1931, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1931. LAWLESSNESS AND UNEMPLOYMENT.

arrest of fifteen men at Auckland on Tuesday, when the

police enforced a Court order for possession of a house in one of the suburbs, must draw pointed attention to the faet that it is at a time of economic stress that lawlessness is found raising its head in what is, in normal times, a law-abiding community. Perhaps it would not be amiss to conduct a brief search for the causes of these mild crime waves and the methods which should be adopted to prevent them. In this connection a very interesting report was issued a couple of months ago by the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement in the United States, and this is discussed by the Christian Science Monitor.

Obviously something more than better police and better courts is needed in the contest with lawlessness. Prevention of crime is needed. It is clearly shown that employment stabilisation would reduce crime; that city planning, which eliminated slums, would do the same; that better methods of assimilating the alien would help, “It is clear that in the larger sense responsibility for crime Tests upon society,” says Mr. Henry W. Anderson, who goes, however, somewhat further than other members of the commission in his statement.

The pictures here and there presented in the case studies of the present report certainly give considerable support to his view, and in some instances they are unforgettable. As for instance the printer who was thrown out of work, sought desperately for jobs, then, pride of craftsmanship gone, looked in vain for any kind of rough labour, and finally ended in Sing Sing prison with a three-year term, for snatching a purse. The commentator on this ease remarks;

“One wonders whether it would not be a wiser policy for New York State to establish a larger number of effective employment bureaux to prevent these difficxilties in adjustment than to build new prisons to which to send men under 30 with a past record of skill in employment and no evidence of intention to break the law. ’ ’

Hard times cause crime, the report shows; so also do slums, ft is here that the tragedy of warped boyhood, finding in delinquent gangs the thrill and adventure in lawbreaking that the normal boy finds in the baseball game, is revealed. The slum is the breeding place for the professional criminal. The youngsters there emulate their hero, the flashily dressed, “big shot” gangster. “I liked to be near him,” said one pathetic young hero worshipper, himself an offender, of a notorious crook. “I felt ‘stuck up’ over the other guys because he came to my home to see Sis.”

To meet the problem of lawlessness, as the report shows, something else is required besides more and better police. Preventive measures that reach to the very heart of the social and economic structure of the country are significant parts of the problem.

Judging by the tone of the statement in which the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates outlined the new policy of the Unemployment Board, this aspect of the situation has not been lost sight of in dealing with New Zealand’s problems. Work of a more productive nature than that provided by the present relief schemes is to be encouraged, and this should ensure that such scenes as the eviction proceedings at Auckland will not develop into lawlessness.