EDUCATION AND CRIME

Hokitika Guardian, 19 September 1929, Page 2

EDUCATION AND CRIME

EDUCATION AND CRIME

In armaments there is constant rivalry between attack and defence. No sooner does some new form of defensive armour make its appearance, capable of resisting every known form of attack than some new weapon is invented capable of piercing the new armour. So it is m the world of crime, and the Minister of Justice thinks that while increase in education has been responsible for a reduction in such crimes as assault and robbery with violence, it has also resulted in an increase of forgery, false pretences, petty thefts, and confidence tricks. In other words, crime has become more scientific. But if this’ is true of crime it is also true off the work for the detection of offences. -*me mod era criminal lias to be more alert and more highly educated than his predecessors. The cracking of a safe is a science and requires some expert knowledge of explosives and chemical means of dealing with metals./, In proportion as the forger hns ;i become more expert so have the means:devised for the prevention of forgery become more scientific. The perforation of cheques has placed a great obstacle in the .way of anv alteration, and' the exploits of “Jim the Penman” would he almost impossible now. The telephone and wireless have done much to aid the capture of criminals and the path of the poisoner has been made much more difficult by the delicate tests employed to. detect the minutest; s trace of poison in a dead body. ..There are probably poisons which would . defy any known method of detection,but, if so, they are known only t, in toxicology, and the knowledge is withheld from the general public. Finger prints have led (frequently to the detection of crime, but the modern criminal has taken to wearing gloves and thus their value has diminished. The motor and the motor cycle have probably operated more in favour of the foices of crime than of the forces of detection. It is interesting in reading the detective stories of a past age to reflect how different the ending might have been if the plot had been laid in our own day. Also many crimes of even fifty years ago, whose perpetrators were never detected, might have been solved had the detectives forces of that time possessed the scientific means we have now at our disposal. It does not seem that it is so much education itself which is responsible for the scientific criminal as the scientific means of detection, which call in turn for greater skill in meeting them.