OUR SOCIAL CODE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 18, 27 October 1942, Page 3

OUR SOCIAL CODE

YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS

The importance of. averting the initial lapse into crime is stressed by the chief probation officer in his report which has been presented in the House of Representatives as part of the Prisons report. "Reclamativc policies in penal methods —be it by an efficient probation system or by wise prison treatment —are at best an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff/' he says. Last year 879 persons were admitted to probation. The' majority, states the report, were in the postadolescent age group, 458 being under 25, and 38 per cent of the total being under 20. There was no material increase in the aggregate number of offenders dealt with, if those committed for breaches of the National Service Act were excluded. Thus the fact emerged that while it might be satisfactory to observe a steady diminution in the number of older offenders who relapsed into crime it was less satisfactory to observe that the criminal ranks w r ere so readily filled by a steady inflow of young offenders, and largely first offenders. "Is it that our methods of penal treatment are not adequately deterrent to prevent such a lapse, or is it that our social code and. our ethical standards are at fault?" the report continues. "The initial_lapse is not the fault of the penal methods, but is rather an indictment of our social institutions whose function it is to instil the fundamentals of moral conduct—the home, the school, and the Church. It has to be admitted that the Avar has un j doubtedly brought in its wake a crop of social problems. The quickened tempo of life, the anxieties and the loosening of conventional restrictions, these all tend towards a drifting from socially acceptable Standards —sacrilege and sacrifice are the stranger bed-fellows'of war."