The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1929 A NIAGARA OF HOMICIDE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 648, 27 April 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1929 A NIAGARA OF HOMICIDE

MURDER has become an industry in the United States of America with good wages occasionally paid (it is said) to expert gunmen in Chicago. Homicide has not yet, of course, taken rank with America’s great protected industries, but for some obscure reason or other the majority of murderers at least enjoy a remarkable measure of protection from punishment. Therefore it is not surprising that President Hoover has deemed it necessary at the outset of his supreme administrative career to deplore the record of criminal infamy in his country and to call upon its Press to arouse the nation’s conscience and help make an end to a shocking position. There is terrible reason for the presidential plea. As Mr. Hoover has said, “life and property in the United States are relatively more unsafe than in any other civilised country in the world.” In proportion to population twenty times as many people are lawlessly killed in America as in the United Kingdom. A red Niagara of homicide sprays the United States with a horrible notoriety. The estimated murder death-roll is not less than 10,000 a year, while possibly it may be nearer 12,000. Compared with the toll of war there is more need of a Monroe Doctrine against murder at home than there is for one against strife abroad through entanglement in foreign politics. The Kellogg Peace Pact was much too narrow in its scope. It should have included the outlawry of murder as well as militarism. Curiously enough there is a demand for abolition of the death penalty for murder in the United States because more murders occur in states having the death penalty than in those who do not have it. As one prominent expert statistician has put it, “while capital punishment disposes of condemned murderers, it does not prevent others from killing.” It should he noted, however, that the full extent of capital punishment has never been impressive enough to serve as a deterrent. Less than two per cent, of the murders in America are followed by the hanging or electrocution of the criminal. It may be unkind to say it, but facts suggest that America is far too lenient with murderers. Indeed, an American journal has pointed out as an essential lesson for Americans that Great Britain is still oldfashioned enough to practise swift and certain justice and thus has comparatively few murders. London becomes very agitated when its annual homicide exceeds 25. “Just think of that ” (observes a New York journal enviously), “in comparison with 228 in Detroit, 498 in Chicago, and 401 in New York last year.” Moreover, in the same period, ten of London’s 27 murderers were hanged, ten committed suicide, four were found insane, one was reprieved, and two were not caught. “Only two were not caught. Then the average time between the murder and the execution in these cases was niuecy-one days. In America a murderer, if convicted, may yet have two years of life, with all the technicalities and appeals that are permitted.” Lawyers will keep American murderers alive as long as their clients’ money lasts. It would be altogether unfair, however, to say that the administrative people of the United States are indifferent to their country’s notorious record of homicide and its more notorious failure to punisll murderers. Juries and even judges may he too easily eluded on occasions, but the easiest way of escape is not through legal technicalities and big expenditure on eloquent defence. The vastness of the country provides the best loophole. There is ample space in which murderers may hide their identity. Then, though America is supposed to be the perfect nursery-land of 300 per cent, efficiency and flow-organisation, it still retains an amazing system of stupidity in regard to the detection of crime. There is no central police or detective power which can follow the trail of suspects from State to State. That, in itself, is bad enough, but, in addition, as aids to murderers, there is no Federal system of finger-prints, and neither is there any interchange of rogues’-gallery portraits. If the leading administrators in the United States really want to clear their splendid country from the tremendous stain of murder, they should begin forthw'tn with a rigorous regulation of the traffic in firearms. Judged by American literature and some cinema films a revolver is to a free citizen of the United States much the same as a toothbrush is to the average citizen of the British Empire. Every man packs one as a necessity. For a country that desires to disarm the whole world, it should not be too great a sacrifice of American freedom to keep pistols out of the hands of fools. Such disarmament would enhance rather than depreciate the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine. After all, Monsieur Guillotine of Paris is not far astray in his philosophy. Execute murderers and execute them quickly. QUIET CORNER