BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 1948 CRIME INCREASING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 81, 13 August 1948, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 1948 CRIME INCREASING

Disturbing feature of the annual report of the New Zealand Police Department, tabled in the House of Representatives on Tuesday is increase of the more serious types of crime it records. Murder still shows an upward trend, with 12 cases for the year ended March 31 last, compared with ten the previous year. Increases are also recorded in burglary, breaking and entering, forgery, receiving, false pretences, obtaining credit by fraud and indecent assault. Prosecutions for intoxication in charge of vehicles and plain drunkenness increased sharply. _ Altogether, we have no cause to be proud of ourselves. On the other hand, our Police Force has. The report is a record of duty well done. The number of unsolved crimes remains few, as does the number of policemen. With only one police officer to every 1192 people in the Dominion, it is really surprising how few serious offenders manage to remain undetected.

Steady increase in critnes of violence and dishonesty over the last/ few years seems to give point to the arguments of those who see a general decline in the moral fibre of the nation. Many factors are blamed, from “comics” and films to the recent war. Probably those who hold the war theory are nearest the mark. Any nation which had organised its every resource for purposes of wreaking death and destruction over a period of years must expect to find some dents left ip. its moral armour. In war it is necessary to forget a lot of the refinements and some of the scruples that civilisation has taught us.. Not all the men thus trained to forget were sufficiently resilient to remember again—to take up life again just where they had left off. Youths, suddenly finding, themselves freed of all the moral restraints of home life, either in the forces or in those lucrative jobs that the war years opened up for them through shortage of labour, found alluring pickings along the primrose path of questionable morality, and foundtemptations for crime in equally questionable company. Now that the war is over, the time has come to lick our wounds, and to try to repair the damage to our social structure that the upheaval has left in its wake.. There is a need now, as never before, for older, more stable citizens, to take an interest in youth and youth organisations. Our schools and Churches will have to be in the forefront of those who would develop a higher standard of morality and honesty throughout the nation, but it is the responsibility of eyery citizen to take the problems seriously and to back the leaders of those organisations to the limit.!