THE CAUSE OF CRIME.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2323, 1 September 1921, Page 2

THE CAUSE OF CRIME.

AMOXG recent contributions to the literature of criminology is an exhaustive account of the English prison system by an acknowledged authority, Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, who has been chairman of the Prison Commission for England and Wales since 1895, and is president of the International Prison Commission. One of the most remarkable passages in ibis book occurs in the preface, where the author is dealing with the extent to which crime depends on and can be explained by strictly social conditions. He says: —“What is summarised by criminologists under the title of Tbvgiene preventive’ comprises all those social and political reforms which make ui) the social programme which is engaging the attention of our statesmen to-day. Better housing and ligfiking, the control of the liquor traffic, cheap food, fair wages, insurance, even village clubs and boy scouts, in l'acl, all the social and ’political problems in vogue to-day —all react directly on (he state of crime. The great war lias given us the great object lesson of what new conditions of life, resulting notably from the control of the liquor trade and facility of employment can effect. A century of legislation directed to lhe changes of the penal code, or the methods of punishment, would not effect wluit social legislation, induced by the war, and affecting the daily habit and living of the people, has revealed during the last live years —the numbers coming to prison reduced To per cent. ihe conclusion is drawn that “when employment is easy and plentiful, and when at the same time there, is severe re.-i riel ion of the opportunities for spending wages in intoxicating drink, there is the probability that the record .<<T' crime would be very low in t*he community. Drunkenness is declared to lie the cause of one-third of all the reeep-. lions into prison, and Sir Evelyn estimates that alcohol enters as a contributing factor into about oh per cent, of offences committed in any given year. “To legislate, therefore, against drink,” he says, “is indirectly to legislate against crime.”