Statistics of Crime.

Hastings Standard, Issue 110, 2 September 1896, Page 4

Statistics of Crime.

INTERESTING FIGURES FROM A NEW BLUE BOOK. A few details of the British Blue Book just issued, dealing with the statistics of crime in England, are well worth careful perusal. On the whole, it would seem that crime is diminishing. We have got well below two hundred crimes to every hundred thousand of the population. The exact figures is I*7 and a decimal fraction. But the burglar is still " a-burgling" as busy as ever. His crime and robbery and forgery are not any longer participating in the decrease of all other crimes. The ugly fact appears to be proved to demonstration by a diagram—that modern improvement in Blue Books which so much relieves that heaviness. The black lines of the burglar, the robber, the " fraud," and the forger are traced horizontally across other and perpendicular lines representing the years since 1865, and they rise or fall according to a scale at the side upon which every hundred of prisoners sent for trial is marked. The topmost rung of the ladder represents eighteen hundred prisoners and upwards. The burglar's line reached it in 1888—it starts from below the fourteen hundred rung in 1885. It gradually descended again and bad got almost to that starting point in 1891. But he has bobbed up again, and now for two years he has been on the top step. His exact numbers are those of the date of the battle of Waterloo. The line of the fraudulent persons is more irregular, and on a lower level altogether. It has been as low as 849, but it has been steadily ascending since 1891, and is now at 1158. The robber and the forger we seem to have always with us. Their lines have not varied much ; still, their tendency until W)0 w to descend, and since then it 1 i- lx» n mounting. There is just a gbt almost imperceptible, drop at r ht end of it. In one respect, fortunately, the diagram exaggerates

for it does not allow for our increasing population. But why are the lines not falling '? There are not really as many different criminals as we think but the law is more merciful than it was. There is a humane passion for short sentences ; and the same criminal is beginning to come up oftener than he could do io the days of his long periods of inceration. To all appearance, there Has gone cn side bv side with a diminishing severity of imprisonment an exactly contrary tendency to increase the punishment of flogging; bat here again we must take our statistics cautiously. After all, if you take the whole of the Hoggings" administered for eighteen years they only average 23 per year, and though the last two annual records have risen to 46 and 65, Mr Troup, editor of the Criminal Statistics, says very wisely, " The numbers, however, are so small that they might be affected by the cases in a single court." What is the prevailing age of the criminal ? Crime, it seems, is precocious, or love? the young. There is most crime committed between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. This is the case not in oar own country only, but all over the world. From sixteen to twenty-one crime flourishes, is the opinion of Mr Troup because, as youth is the time of activity and adventure, so it is necessarily the time when the tendency is strongest to run counter to law and custom and the precepts of morality. Of those who sow the wild oats of crime in earlier years some, bat not all, join permanently the ranks of the habitual criminals. Others settle down to be unoffending, sometimes even respectable citizens ; as life advances they find it " decidedly harder to climb trees, but not nearly so hard to sit still." Will Wales finally surrender and repudiate Monmouth when it discovers that that country is still, and with increased emphasis, the most criminal in all England and Wales ? It will gain nothing thereby, for Glamorgan has the next highest record for crime. But it will find some consolation in the reflection that a large amount of crime in Glamorgan is not clue so much to the corruption of the innocent Welshmen as the immigration of English, Irish, and foreign criminals. Of 438 persons j convicted at titc Assizes and Quarter 1

Sessions in Glamorganshire in 1895, 163 were Welsh, 166 English, 88 Irish, 9 Scotch, and 12 foreign. The Eastern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdon and Cambridge have the lowest record for all offences except those against the game laws, for which their record is the highest. The suicide's line runs up to its height in July, and is getting rapidly down towards its low water mark when November is reached. In regard to this crime, both Monmouth and Glamorgan redeem their character. They are among the counties with least suicides. Northamptonshire is the greatest sinner in suicides, Kent next, and Sussex next ; then in succession Suffolk, Lincoln, Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, and London. The suicides in London are one in 100,000 of the population. In Northamptonshire they are rather more—eleven in the 100,000. The least suicidal county is Carmarthen, with only three suicides to 100,000 of the population.