Evening Star Newspaper, March 6, 1932, Page 73

Features Art Notes PART 7. The %mulay %hn’ Magasine WASHINGTON, MARCH 6, 1932. 20 PAGES. BRITAIN'S NEW WAR ON CRIME T had to happen just at the moment when British criminologists were commenting on the remarkable de- cline over the last 20 years of violent and brutal crime and of the prison population—a jail revelt, Britain’s first. There was a revolt at Dartmoor before, but that was just after the War of 1812, when American prisoners of war were incarcerated in the granite moorland stronghold. Several prisoners were killed and many were wounded when the troops fired. The British government, much perturbed, ordered an international in- quiry, but the origin of the mysterious order to fire was never traced. American—or, to be more precise, Hollywood—inspiration played some part in the affair a month or so ago. The out- break was staged in accordance with the technique revealel to interested crimi- nals, then free but subsequently jailed, in a motion picture based on an Amer- ican prison break. The Dartmoor con- vict rebels were imitative. During the subsequent investigation a convict testi- fied to this effect. But things were settled in a manner to which they are accustomed in England. Police were called im—the guards were busy ringing the walls to prevent escapes—and broke up the revolt by a baton charge. The sequel was more sen- sational. A hurried call that same night for troops. Two companies rushed up with machine guns to guard the prison and all approaches thereto. Scotland Yard men checked up on known desper- ate criminals in wondon, and squads of detectives scoured the moorland villages and the adjacent big towns of Tavistock and Plymouth for armed criminals in automobiles, believed to be standing by for an assault on the prison while their comrades inside held the guards in a new outbreak. ALL very odd, bewildering and disquiet- ing as much for the police as for the British public, which never heard of such goings-on in the national prisons. The three prison commissioners and the experts in closest touch with crime, criminals and crime prevention meas- ures, were perhaps not so astonished; for there have been strange changes in the crime situation in England. Interest- ing experiments are in progress in the handling of crime and criminals which rather resemble the experiments of an earnest student in the realm of high. Wl TH National Attention Centered Upon It by the Dartmoor Prison Riot, England Is Making a Drive to Solve Its Crime Problem by Saving Youthful De- linquents—Hozw the Prisons of America and England Dif fer—No Young Crimi- nals Sent to Dartmoor Institution—Jobs Changed After Three Months. By C. Patrick Thompson explosives—he knows his job, but you never know when something may go off with a bang. Look at the paradox of the basic crime situation in Britain. Crime has been rising, absolutely and relatively, since the war, and yet the number of prisoners has been steadily diminishing (the daily average has come down from 14,352 in 1913 to 7,938). Lack of demand for accommodation has reduced the number of prisons from 56 twenty years ago to 29 today, and those have not been enlarged. At first sight it looks as if the police were falling behind in the fight against the criminal element. But it is not that. They are more efficient than they ever were before. Lord Byng, who restored police morale after the famous graft scandals, has given place at Scotland Yard Headquarters to Lord Trenchard— “Boom” Trenchard, the most dynamic personality among Britain’s war com- manders. The detective service has been reorganized and strengthened. A big mobile police force has been organized in addition to the celebrated “flying squad.” No, the factors are more complex and significant. Glance at the main ones: Laws have been reformed, and the minds of judges have moved with the times. There is not so much “off to jail, you!” about the criminal and the county courts. The whole treatment of crime has tended to become of a more reformatory and less punitive character. Fines and probation are now used to deal with a number of offenses which were formerly punished by imprisonment. Drunkenness, assaults, begging, gaming and prostitution have all heavily de- clined. There are not one-quarter the drunks today that there were 20 years ago. Crimes of brutality, burglary, rob- bery and aggravated larcenies, and seri- ous crimes against women—these have all decreased. UDGES say the “cat” has served its purpose here. They have been order- ing a flogging more frequently in cases of crimes of violence. In several cases where the criminals were in their early twenties and had bad records, from five to seven years of penal servitude have Vo B R e been ordered, plus from 15 to 20 strokes of the birch. If figures indicate anything at all, they indicate that the judges are right. For while crime in general continues to rise, crimes of violence continue to fall. Use of the “cat,” in combination with the power the judges now possess to add a long term of preventative detention to sentences passed upon dangerous crimi- nals with black records, possesses one weak spot. It may incline the criminal, who knows he is in “for it” if he is taken, to risk a killing. Two or three policemen have been shot—one killed—for this and no other reason, in the last three years. But the risk is considered worth it, the British criminal not usually being a killer. The murder rate remains steady— around 100 a year. It has not varied much since the beginning of the century. The big increase in crime is due to break-ins (if you break in by day, the charge is “housebreaking,” and the sen- tence is comparatively light, but if you break in by night, that is “burglary,” and you are liable to be sent up for seven years), frauds, simple and minor larcenies. Thanks tc the automobile, it takes fewer criminals now to commif more crimes. A few weeks ago Scotland Yard’s flying squad threw its net out for an automo- bile gang of six young thugs who had carried out seven robberies in London and its suburbs in 24 hours. They lay, for four employes carrying wages in dif« ferent parts of the city, and got each one with neatness and dispatch. To pass the time in between these major grabs; they stopped to snatch the bags of three lone women in deserted streets. Five thousand dollars in notes and jewelry was their haul that day. ECENTLY there was an automobile accident, and the driver was taken to a hospital. The car proved to be a stolen machine. A detective quietly gof the man’s finger prints in the hospital and looked them up in the Yard files, He found more than a score of their fel« lows. They had been collected from doors, furniture and window frames of houses which had been robbed. The crook was 22 and had never been in the hands of the police before. Youth! There you have the crux of the crime problem in Britain. Adul§