Page:The Statistics of Crime in Australia (IA jstor-2338612).pdf/11

 leaving the colony, elbowed out, as it were, by the competition of the freed criminal class. The hand of fellowship is not extended to the latter by the former, and we cannot wonder at such reticence; for although, as my authority remarks, "many of the ex-convicts have acquired homes and property, the condition of the mass is most unsatisfactory. They remain wanderers on the face of the land; religion unknown to them, drunkenness an universal vice."

In a society so constituted, there is of course an incessant recommitting of offences. If unlocked doors will argue for a limitation of crime in some particular direction, there must yet, by the results before us, be a full compensation in many other ways. But in the first place, to show how this crime is restricted almost solely to the convict class, I may mention that out of 287 persons in actual confinement for fresh offences, as reckoned on one particular day, only 6 belonged to the non-convict class. With respect to at least the graver class of offences, a great misconception is apt to prevail outside the colony, from attention being directed merely to the records of the supreme court. Some 25 convictions yearly for the West Australian population shows proportionately no heavier criminal list than some of the eastern colonies. I have already alluded to the true explanation, which consists in the specially extended powers of the magistrates. In Vest Australia the summary jurisdiction of the bench seems to exclude only a sentence of death; as, for example, such sentences as seven years and 100 lashes are of common occurrence.

We shall appreciate more exactly the actual social condition of the colony in its criminal relations, by the grave fact that during the year 1863 the number of convictions, for all kinds of offences, was no less than 3,277 in a population—both sexes, and all ages included—of 18,700. This is a proportion of 1 offender to less than 6 of population. For purposes of comparison, we may, from this datum, assume about 1 in 4 for cases dealt with, as distinguished from convictions. In Victoria the proportion was lately 1 in 18; in New South Wales 1 in 19; in South Australia 1 in 36; and in England and Wales 1 in 45. We have already ascertained that the proportion in Van Dieman's Land, in its worst days, was 1 to rather less than 4. West Australia happily does not stand out the huge blot that was presented to the world by the larger scale of the senior settlement; and yet, judged by the proportions of this criminal test, the former is even now close upon the heels of her eastern prototype.

But to return for a moment to these 3,277 convictions in one year in West Australia, and their proportion of 1 to less than 6 of population. Many of these, no doubt, are cases of repeated offence on the part of the same individuals during the twelve months. But after making due allowance on this behalf, and on the other hand