CRIMINALS NOT DRUNKARDS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9018, 3 January 1908, Page 7

CRIMINALS NOT DRUNKARDS.

._ • A lecture on "Detection and Punishment of Crime" was delivered by Detective-Superintendent John Ord, of Glasgow Police Force, at a meeting of the Toynbee Literary Society, Glasgow, on November 14th last After dealing with the methods of detection from the days of trial by combat till the present system of linger prints, and with the various methods of punishment, he said it was being continually drummed into their ears that drink was at the root of all crime. Some few years ago it was said that if drunkards could only be shut up in inebriate reformatories they would be completely cured. Inebriate reformatories had been set up and a number of people had been confined in them for terms of tluee years. The first thing many of them did on being at liberty was to get drunk, some of them within a few hojrs on their liberation. Drink, was no doubt the .cause of street disorders, petty assaults, bad lang-' uage, and such like offences, but persons who committed such offences cduld not be classed as criminals. It was here that their reformers went wrong—those clergymen, judges ar.d other public men who did not make a distinction between offences against the rules of good conduct and crime. The real criminal was never a drunk- : ard. In manv cases he was very temperate in his habits. The forger, imposter, housebreaker, and criminals of a like nature, so soon as they i took to drink, ended their careers as , •professional criminals. It might be ; taken that crime in nearly every case j led to drink in due course, but except* in cases of serious assault, drink I seldom led to crime. | The Inebriates Act of 1898 enact- j ed that where a crime was commit- I ted by a person under the influence j of drink, or where drink was a direct j cause, he was to be detained in an inebriate reformatory for three years instead of being sent to prison. Nine years had elapsed since that Act was passed, and nearly 40,000 people had been convicted of crime in Glasgow in that time, yet only 16 persons had been found to be under the influence of drink, when the crime was committed. The principal causes of crime, he held, were betting, gambling, immorality, laziness, bad company, living above one's income, love of fine clothes, and discontent, but the greatest of all was betting. Large numbers of the best of their young men were being ruined yearly by betting. If he were asked to suggest remedies, he would say to make it illegal for newspapers to publish betting news, and he would sweep seven-day brokers out of existence. These were not required. Pawnshops were quite sufficient for the purpose of the working classes ■getting a temporary loan on articles. In a great many cases stolen property found its way to brokers, where, after seven days, it was disposed of, and could only with difficulty be traced. He would also put certain restrictions on metal refiners in order to check the immediate melting of articles which might have been stolen.