CRIME AMONG YOUTHS

Southland Times, Issue 24885, 27 October 1942, Page 4

CRIME AMONG YOUTHS

Probation System In N.Z.

During the year 879 persons, were admitted to probation by the courts in lieu of more severe forms of punishment, states the chief probation officer, Mr B. L. Dallard, in his report for 1941-42. The majority of those placed on probation were in the post-adoles-cent age-group, 458 being under 25 years of age and 38 per cent, of the total dealt with being under 20. “There has been no material increase in the aggregate number of offenders dealt with, if those committed for breaches of the National Service Act are excluded,” he says. “Thus the fact emerges that, while it may be satisfactory to observe a steady diminution in the number of older offenders who relapsed into crime, it is less satisfactory to observe that the criminal ranks are so readily filled by a steady inflow of young offenders, and largely first offenders. “Reclamative policies in penal methods—be it by. an efficient probation system or by wise prison treatment—are at least an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. It is the initial lapse into crime that should be averted. Is it that our methods of penal treatment are not adequately deterrent to prevent such a lapse, or it is that our social code and our ethical standards are at fault? The initial lapse is not the fault of the penal methods, but is rather an indictment of our social institutions whose function it is to instil the fundamentals of moral conduct—the home, the school, and the church.

“It has to be admitted that the war has undoubtedly brought in its wake a crop of social problems, the quickened tempo of life, the anxieties, and the loosening of conventional restrictions, all tend toward a drifting from socially acceptable standards —sacrilege and sacrifice are the strange bedfellows of war.”