VANDALS PUNISHED

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 19, 21 May 1952, Page 3

VANDALS PUNISHED

The Bench of Justices at the Taupo Police Court iast week quite properly dealt severely with a trio of vandals convicted of converting trucks to their own use, indulging in joy rides round and about, and doing considerable damage, This kind of lawlessness needs to be put down with a firm hand. It should be clearly un~ derstood by mischief makers that the community will stand no nonsense, and will support the police in their efforts to protect public and private property. There is no doubt that over the period covering the two world wars there has been a marked deviation in respect for private property. The figures relating to juvenile delinquency are ,too high, cases of petty theft far too frequent, and the practice of converting motor vehicles is a persistent public nuisance. If social conditions in New Zealand were such that poverty and want were prevalent, the persistence of thieving would be at least understandable. But that is not the ease — far from it, in fact. There is no need to steal. The problem therefore is not economic. It is a moral one, of social and ethical standard. Hence it is fundamentally a question of home and school training and discipline. It is noticeable that this process of moral deterioration has -coincided with the ascendency of a school of thought that insists on "self-expres-sion" for the child in home and school. One of its by-products is a wave of sentimentalism, of mollycoddling the wrong-doer, that has even permeated the Magistrates Courts. There are indieations, however, that the pendulum is swinging back in the direction of a mere com-mon-sense attitude toward the problem of crime and punishment. That will be a good thing for all concerned.