Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/413

Rh

HE question whether crime is increasing or decreasing in England and Wales has been the subject of an interesting discussion in The Nineteenth Century between the Rev. William Douglas Morrison, chaplain to the prison at Wandsworth, and Sir Edmund F. Du Cane. Mr. Morrison remarks upon the incertitude and diversity of opinion prevailing on the subject as something which it is desirable to clear away, and attributes the perplexity of the public mind in the matter, in the main, to the erratic and haphazard manner in which criminal statistics are frequently handled. One of the most obvious mistakes, and yet one which is frequently committed in dealing with questions of crime, is to draw sweeping inferences from the criminal statistics of a single year, or even of a short series of years. "It has to be remembered that criminal returns are largely affected by the fluctuating conditions of social existence, some of the more important of these being the rise or decay of political or industrial agitation, the ebb and flow of commercial prosperity, and, more rarely, the emotions aroused among the population by a state of war. In order as much as possible to neutralize the disturbing effect of these inconstant social factors, it is essential that all statistics relating to crime on which it is proposed to build any general conclusions should cover a decade at the least, and unless this principle is adhered to misleading ideas are almost certain to arise." Sir Edmund Du Cane thinks that even ten years are hardly a long enough period on which to base correct conclusions.

In Mr. Morrison's investigation of the subject three methods of treatment present themselves for consideration. The total number of offenses as reported to the police may be taken as a criterion; or the number of cases tried, both summarily and by indictment; or the total number of convictions. In order to appreciate the movement of crime in all its various aspects, each of these three methods is more or less necessary.

The returns of the yearly average of trials in the three decades 1868 to 1889 reveal an increase from 466,087 in the first decade to 701,060 in the third, satisfying Mr. Morrison that the total volume of crime has increased very materially within the period. Among the causes which have fostered this growth, he assigns an important place to the development of social legislation. Offenses against the Elementary Education Acts alone, he says, "have furnished considerably more than half a million cases, and other acts of a like character have produced similar results. But the growth of offenses arising from a continuous widening of the sphere of legislative effort is to some extent counterbalanced by