CRIME IN ENGLAND.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 121, 20 May 1909, Page 7

CRIME IN ENGLAND.

INCREASE' IN", INDICTABLE OFFENCES.

A voluminous Blue Book, containing criminal statistics for England and Wales for the year 1907, was recently issued. It shows that indictable offences known to the police were 98,882, as compared with 91,665 in 1906. c The total number of persons tried was 746,955, as compared with 760,057. Persons convicted numbered 607,402, as compared with 622,444, while persons imprisoned on conviction were 174,632, against 183,773. The diminution of criminality indicated by the foregoing figures is, howover, confined to less serious breaches of" the law. Crimes proper have,, on the contrary^ shown a marked increase, the number of indictable offences reported to the police being greater than in any year since 1882. Offences against property, mainly consisting of different. forms of dishonesty, make up about sixteenseventeenths of the total. Offences of violence numbered 1501, as against 1552 in 1906. The return states that larcenies make up five-sixths of the whole amount of crime, and determine the rise or fall of the total. From 42,292 in- 1599, larcenies steadily increased up to 1905, when the figure was 50,155. In 1906 the figures fell to 47J586, and in 1907 they returned to about the same level as in 1905. THE^ PREROGATIVE OF MERCY. The total number of persons pro-

ceeded against for non-indictable offences fell from 700,978 to 685,574. The total numbci >f p-rrsons dealt with by courts oi' '-.mti-u-y jurisdiction ofr all oifenc was. /34 056, of ■ whom 1L'0,05? we? disc:•.•irgt.d. 3273 sent to industrial :*': jols. ?i;kl /"-9/.U23 convicted; Out of -'.vein,' detuu sentences, eleven we-.} commuted to penal servitude for life. Five free pardons were granted, 247 remissions of sentences were, allowed, and 56 convicts were released on license in special cases at earlier dates than those allowed by the .ordinary regulations.