CRIME AND THE FILMS

Hokitika Guardian, 5 September 1930, Page 5

CRIME AND THE FILMS

SYDNEY POLICE VIEW

SYDNEY, Aug. 28

One of the most interesting views on the question as to whether the prevailing poverty has been responsible for an increase in crime and criminals in Sydney has been expressed by the Commissioner of Police (Mr Childs). He gives a very emphatic “No.”

,: It is not correct to> say that we have more ‘new* criminals thap usual,” he said. “Any increase in crime should be traced, not to the depression, hut to the influence of moving pictures in the past. There used to be many pictures which showed the gangster of the piece as quite a fine fellow, and some of them even showed his methods, giving valuable hints to potential criminals in Australia. There are not so many such pictures now, but I think that the censor’s scissors should be used ruthlessly upon films which tend to glorify the criminals.

“I do not think that- we can blame the economic depression for turning honest men to criminals. It may be true that it has driven some men to petty theft—when a lobster is stolen from a fish shop or a tin of salmon' from the grocer’s. It may turn out that the thief was driven to i l by hard times. In such cases, however, as the recent bus hold-up or « the Mud gee mail robbery, the men responsible were not previously' respectable citizens, who had been driven to crime by unemployment or shortage, of money. Those were professional criminals, who had had a good grounding in crime before tliej r undertook those jobs. “The man who is hardest hit by the depression, and who stoops 1 o dishonesty is not the man to commit a burglary or stoop to .shopbreaking.' 1