THE "RED SERIES."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3005, 30 September 1908, Page 3

THE "RED SERIES."

CHIME IN FRANCE

Tha "Red Series," as the Paris newspapers call the daily list of murders and other crimes of violence in Paris and the province, is not, as some optimists declare, a passing phase. Statistics show that the tida of crime in France during the last flirty years has been steadily rising, the figures having almost doubled in that period. What criminologists r jgard as a mo3t disquieting symptom 18 the enormous increase of juvenile crime. The proportion of murders .and attempted murders on tha part of young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one is 4.20 per cent, of the general volume of crime, as comoared with 2 per cent, for all age 3 above twenty-one. The bands of armed apaches who infe3t Paris are for the most part boys between the . ages of sixteen and twenty. Of undiscovered crimes the number in- ■ cr-nsed irom 87,073 ii 1896 to 105,998 in 1301, and 107.710 in 190 K. These are the latest statistics available, but it i 3 estimated that the returns for the last year or two will be still more formidable. As to the causes, they appear tu be eo numerous that no agreement on the subject has been found possible. Ab> • sinthe drinking, the tolerance ; accrrded to vice, the spread of a •degraded materialism, the idleness and misery arising from the disorganisation of labour, and the practice, now so common, especially among the lower classes, of carrying revolvers are among the causes suggested by an eminent writer on the subject." Opponents of tha abolition of capital punishment see a remedy i in recourse to the guillotine, and protests have baen made against the I abuse of clemency in many other ways—noninal sentences for first -offences which mean instant release, ft conditional discharges, the increased Ife comfort of prisons, and the relaxation of penal servitude conditions. Whatever may be the real or tb.3 mMt practical remedies, it is imperative, in the opinion of M. Rostand, the writer referred to above, that in the interests of society an effort should be made to che=k ■ the nutiber, the precocity, and the immunity of the criminals, and the ■nverwhsimhg preponderance of piblic sentiment heartily supports that "view.