CRIME INCREASE IN U.S.A.

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 489, 19 October 1928, Page 12

CRIME INCREASE IN U.S.A.

From a judicial point of view, prohibition in the "United States does not seem to be very popular. Judge Charles Lenaham, the famous Pennsylvanian Jurist, speaking in Palis, said: “The undeniable increase in juvenile crime, the most harmful phase of all in our recent crime wave, is directly traceable to the prohibition law. The modern generation has developed a spirit unknown when 1 was a youth, which has made the pocket flask full of raw whisky, a requirement among “good sports’’ of both sexes.’’ Judge Talley, of the Court of General Sessions of New York City, in his sworn evidence before the U.S.- Committee of Enquiry, said: “It is my calm and deliberate judgment, based on my experience, that the greatest single menace confronting the'United States to-day is the existence of the prohibition law as it now stands. One of the most imposing promises madq by the friends of prohibition before the Eighteenth Amendment was that by abolishing drink crime would be decreased to a minimum. That promise has not been j fulfilled. ' Crime has increased in such j amazing proportion that it has become j the dominant consideration of most jof the State and municipal governments of the nation. I need not quote statistics to the committee to demonstrate that this is the most lawless country on the face of the earth. I go a step farther. I assert that prohibition is one of the largest contributing factors to that disgraceful condition, by reason of the conceded failure or inability by Federal and State authorities to enforce the law; it has created a disrespect for law, which, starting • ith prohibition, has gone all along the line.’" —Advt.