Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/418

 Acts could not be committed before 1870, but they count for 96,601 in the latter year. Few people, however, would say that 'crime' was increasing and civilization demoralizing us because we now compel parents to send their children to school, and hale before the magistrates those who fail to do so, not having yet been accustomed to accept the new law. Offenses against local acts and borough by-laws, which are not 'crimes,' have in the same time increased from 35,081 to 59,108; begging and other offenses against the vagrant acts, from 41,780 to 46,019; offenses against the highway and similar acts, from 29,837 to 32,889. If the efforts that are being made to make it a penal offense to work more than eight hours a day are successful, we might expect to find several hundred thousand added to the number of offenses brought before the magistrates, but nobody would consider this a proof of increase of 'crime.' To find out, therefore, whether crime has increased or decreased, it is necessary to extract from the mass of figures those which really illustrate this point. The judicial statistics have provided an excellent classified analysis of the offenses in which those that consist of breaches of the laws for the protection of the person or property are set forth in five classes, which constitute substantially what people have in their minds when they speak of an increase or decrease of crime. The tables distinguish between offenses summarily dealt with and those not so treated as indictable offenses. Offenses of the latter class only are included in the classification. These consist of offenses against the person, including assaults; offenses against property, with violence; offenses against property, without violence; malicious offenses against property; and forgery and offenses against the currency. The tables, as summarized by the author, afford clear evidence of a continuous decrease in the number of crimes committed both indictable and summary, which is fatal to the theory of an inevitable increase.

Such results. Sir Edmund Du Cane observes, should be no matter of surprise, as they have, to all appearances, followed the preventive measures taken in order to effect them, among which are particularly specified the establishment of institutions to guard young people from falling into crime. This is further corroborated by the decrease in the number of first convictions, and the diminution in the number of young persons (under sixteen years of age) committed to prison (which includes all those sent to reformatories).

The author makes no reference in his review to punishment as in any degree the cause of the decrease in crime which he sets forth, "though," he says in his concluding paragraph, "I well remember that, when crime was increasing, it was at once set down to the prison system. I will not endeavor to appraise the