FAULTY CODE?

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20916, 16 October 1942, Page 3

FAULTY CODE?

LAPSES INTO CRIME CAUSES DISCUSSED LACK OF DETERRENTS (P.R.) WELLINGTON, this day. The importance of averting an initial lapse into crime is stressed by the chief probation officer in his report presented in the House of Representatives as part of the prisons report. “Reclamative policies in penal methods —be it by an efficient probation system or by wise prison treatment —are at best,” he says, “an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff” 1 Last year 879 persons were admitted to probation. A majority, states the report, were in the postadolescent 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 com- , mitted 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 were so readily filled by a steady inflow of young offenders and larger first offenders.

“Is it that our- methods of penal treatment are rMt adequately deterrent to prevent such a lapse?” the report continues. “Or is it that our social code and our ethical standards are at fault? The initial lapse is not, the fault of penal methods but is rather an indictment of pur social institutions whose function it is to instil the fundamentals of moral conduct —the home, school, and church. It has to be admitted that the war has undoubtdely brought in its wake a crop of social problems, quickened the tempo of life anxieties and the loosening of conventional restrictions. • These all tend towards a drifting from socially acceptable standards— sacrilege and sacrifice are the strange bedfellows of war.”