Back in the good old days

Ran across this article from a 1947 edition of the Monroe Morning World. Based on this, it would seem the more things change, the more they remain the same. The text is difficult to read from the scanned version, so, I've typed the content to make it legible. Enjoy!

Postwar Crime

During the war a good many law enforcement officers, sociologists, and just plain people were predicting that there would be a postwar crime wave. Statistics for 1946, released by the FBI, indicate that they were right. Crime, up 7.6 per cent over 1945, now stands at a 10-year high.

It seems likely that the situation is even worse than expected. For the predictions must surely have considered the factor of widespread, if temporary, postwar unemployment. But it's safe to say that few offenders are robbing and stealing today because work isn't to be had. So the major causes of present crime must be social and emotional, rather than economic.

Some of the causes are not hard to identify. Home training suffered in many families during the war when mothers joined the ranks of the workers to help ease the manpower shortage or help support a family whose father was in the service. Thousands of school teachers left the classroom for etter-paying jobs. Their replacements were often inferior in training as well as number.

Military requirements thinned the ranks of law enforcement agencies, which in many cases are still under-staffed. And then, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover put it, effects of the "spirit of wartime abandon" have not yet run their course. Teenagers who grew up in the emotionally charged atmosphere of the war may be finding it hard to make adjustments and settle down. Many young veterans are at loose ends.

All this is reflect in the accent on youth which the 1946 crime figures give. More 21-year-olds were arrested than any other age group. They were followed by those of 22, 23, 24 and 20 years. Youths under 21 accounted for 16.9 per cent of the total arrested.

There are two remedies, of course, which the situation demands -- prevention and reclamation. Though the causes of most juvenil delinquency can be found at home, all parents do not have the mental, emotional, or economic equipment to cope with the problem. Communities must concern themselves with it. Decent housing, adequate schools with adequately-paid teachers, and free recreational facilities are some of the thrice-familiar but often neglected weapons.

More serious and more neglected is the problem of making good citizens out of youths who already have police records. Countless criminal histories point up the great need for intelligent, sympatheric, well-trained probation and parole officers. Treatment during the social "convalescence" of a young first offender is clearly a neglected science.

The 1946 crime figures give warning that a job must be done. Though it is difficult, our preent economic climate of full employment and reasonable prosperity makes this seem a propitious time to begin it in earnest.