YOUTHFUL CRIME

Evening Star, Issue 24327, 16 October 1942, Page 4

YOUTHFUL CRIME

WAR SLACKENS STANDARDS (Special.) WELLINGTON, October 16. The importance of averting the initial lapse into crime is stressed oy the chief probation officer in I)is report presented in the House of Representatives as pan of the Prisons Report. “ Reciamative policies in penal methods—be it by an efficient probation system or by wise prison treatment —are at best,” he says, ”an amou.ance at the bottom of a cliff.” Last year 879 persons were admitted to probation. 'Flic majority, stales the report, were in the post-aao.esccni 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 arc excluded. Tims, the fact emerged that, while it might he satisfactory to observe (he steadv diminution in the number of older offenders who reiapsed into crime, it was less satisfactory to observe that the criminal ranks were so readily filled by a steady inflow of young offenders, and largely first offenders. “ Is it that, our methods of penal treatmen are not adequately deterrent to prevent such a lapse? ” the report continues, " or is it that our social code and our ethical standards arc at fault? 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 war has undoubtedly brought in its wake a crop of social problems, in the quickened tempo of life, anxieties, and the loosening of conventional restrictions. These all tend towards a drifting h-om socially acceptable standards—sacrilege and sacrifice are the strange bedfellows of war.”