Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/414

400 the abolition in recent years of several old penal laws, as well as by the greater reluctance of the police to set the law in motion against trivial offenders. . . .Offenses may be growing, but the population may be increasing still faster; the question, therefore, requires to be considered, to what extent the total number of cases tried is keeping pace with the general growth of the community. Basing our calculations upon the estimated population at each decade, it comes out that in 1860-'69 one case was tried annually for every forty-four of the inhabitants of England and Wales; in 1870-'79, one for every thirty-seven inhabitants; and in 1880-'89, one for every thirty-eight. According to these statistics, the proportion of crime to the population has remained almost the same for the last two decades; but, if the last two decades are compared with the first, the growth of crime has outstripped the growth of population."

The question whether crime is increasing in seriousness along with its expansion in volume may be answered best by an analysis of the number and nature of the indictable offenses brought up for trial during the three decades. The figures disclose a continuous decrease; but opposed to this is the fact that the cases of offenses against property without violence, constituting two thirds of the whole number tried in the first decade, were more usually dealt with summarily during the two subsequent decades. For arriving at a more accurate estimate of the serious crimes committed in the first decade, Mr. Morrison selects as a type murder, concerning which no material change in public feeling or judicial procedure has taken place within the last thirty years. The figures—126 in the first decade to 153 in the third—show that this, the most serious of all crimes, has steadily increased within the last three decades, and that in proportion to the growth of population it was nearly as common in the last decade as in the first.

The author believes, therefore, that the apparent decrease in indictable offenses is attributable to a change of criminal procedure rather than to an actual decrease of serious crime. Even after the Summary Jurisdiction Act was passed, by which a large number of cases were taken out of the indictable list, every form of serious crime appears to have relatively increased. Large increases in the average of commitments to prison, the extension of juvenile and reformatory schools, and the rapid and uninterrupted augmentation of the police force, are further adduced as pointing to the conclusion that "crime during the last thirty years, for which we possess official returns, has not decreased in gravity, and has been steadily developing in magnitude."

The explanation of this supposed increase is sought in the concentration of men in large cities and industrial centers.

Sir Edmund Du Cane criticises Mr. Morrison's methods,