Violent and Coarse
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
8 Aug 2004
Some time ago the Prime Minister gave a key speech where he claimed that Australian society was becoming coarser and more violent.
My instinctive response was to agree that society was certainly coarser than 50 years ago, but that it was probably not more violent. I can remember my uncle talking about mob brawls among spectators at Aussie Rules matches in his youth. These are a thing of the past today.
Standards of dress, public nudity, the ready availability of soft and hard core pornography, the advertisements on billboards beside our major roads would not have been tolerated by our grandparents. Some of our best known athletes will pose naked for fund-raising calendars and some of their extra-curricular activities have received wide publicity. School-boy and especially school-girl language has deteriorated and become more explicit and repetitive; a deterioration reflected in, and partly caused by television shows, such as reality T.V.
Probably a lot of this is like water off a duck’s back, but it does represent a coarsening of sensibilities which brings few positives.
The real surprise for me came in the Australian statistics on violent crime.
The murder rate has doubled since 1953, although it was 6 per cent lower in 2000 than in 1993.
Last century rape rates fell to very low levels around 1950, but between 1964 and 1993 rapes increased ten times.
Serious assault rates fell continuously from 1900 until the 1960s, when it was half that between 1900-1920. In the 1980s the assault rate equalled that of 1900, but there was a ten-fold rise from then until 1993 and massive continuing increases until 2000.
There is an enormous difference between the number of boys and girls who commit juvenile violent crime, but robbery and serious assault by 10-17 year old boys increased five times from the mid-70s until the mid-90s.
All in all violent crime decreased last century until about 1950, but increased dramatically by a factor of 37 times between 1964 and 2000.
These figures were a surprise to me and cannot be explained by a more efficient police force. They merit serious public debate especially on causes and possible remedies.
One major reason for more violent crime is the increased use of soft and hard drugs. Addicts have to steal to pay for their habits and sometimes this means robbery with violence, but drugs and alcohol also destroy inhibitions, and unleash aggression that would be unthinkable for the agents when clear-headed.
Marriage breakdown, absent fathers, unemployment, the sexual jealousy that accompanies promiscuity and especially violent pornography are also contributing factors.
It is more difficult to identify what can be done to improve the situation. But if we know where we are now and where we would like to arrive, we have more chance of getting to that destination.
