MORE CRIME

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 174, 16 March 1932, Page 2

MORE CRIME

JUDGE'S COMPARISON WITH SIXTY YEARS AGO. LENIENCY FUTILE. That there is now more crime in England than at any other time during the last 60 years was the startling statement made by Mr. Justice McCardie in the course of his address to the grand jury at Leeds Assizes. -Faced with a calendar containing no fewer than 106 cases, embracing nearly every conceivable kind of crime, his lordship emphasised, in trenchant language, not only the gravity* resulting from an alarming growth of criminality in this country, but expressed his personal views on the reasons for such increase. I have come to the conclusion," his lordship stated, "that di'ink has very little to do with serious crime to-day. I think, too, that poverty has very little to do with it. The main causes of crime are fudamental.- They spring from the defects of human nature — from greed,*lust, vanity, and anger." Present-day crime statistics, the judge went on to say, were grave. The statistics related to the country as a whole. The number of prisons 'steadily became less, but the number of crimes committed steadily grew from year to year. It was vital when considering this to rememher that not only were indictable -offences which were prosecuted at AssiZes and elsewhere increasing, but also those which Were not prosecuted because the off enders were unknown or could not be arrested. Although there had not heen a large increase in crimes of violence during the last 60 years, armed criminals were becoming more numerous, and there, of late, had been a deplorable increase in housebreaking, shopbreaking larceny, false pretences, blackmail, and, above all, cases of fraud. More Ingenious. "The criminals of to-day," his lordship proceeded, "whether they be persistent criminals or ordinary criminals, are more ingenious and more astute than the criminals of a generation ago. We ought, I think, to rememher that the time and attention of the police throughout the country are increasingly employed with minor offences in connection with motoring by-laws and the like. The result of this aspeet of the matter will become increasingly* apparent as time goes by." One of the gravest features of crime statistics in the last ten years, the judge added, was the number of boys found guilty of indictable offences, and there had also been a regrettable increase of crime committed hy youths between 16 and 21 years of age. Facts like these must cause concern to every responsible citizen, and it was important that they should be made public. Later in the Assizes, the judge, passing sentence on a man who had pleaded guilty to shopbreaking, remarked that this form of crime seemed to be increasing all over the country to such an ext -nt ?s to become almost epidemic. In hi . c. )i ron, : it was doubtful whether leniency shown prisoners in the past had not been carried to excess. The day might come when judges would have to act with greater severity in such cases.