CRIME IN ENGLAND

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14767, 5 October 1921, Page 3

CRIME IN ENGLAND

* AN INTERESTING COMPARISON. (From Our Correspondent). LONDON, August 12. A Blue Book issued on Saturday gave us the crime records of this country Tor 1919, and., like the parson's egg, tlfey were "good in parts." It has become customary to say that as a consequence of having been ' for years engaged in war certain types of men easily fall into crimes of violence. This may be the case, but that such generalisations may easily mislead seems to be proved by the fact that in 1919 recorded crimes of violence here were rather less than 71 per rent, of the number in 1913, when only a fractional part of our population had ever seen war. Why concurrently with decrease in crimes of violence there was an increase, from 133 to 917, in cases of bigamy takes some thinking out; and it opens up considerations of so many known factors and as many i -c speculative ones that we dare not, unless you are prepared to devote a page to the. subject, venture upon comment with the least hope of making it exhaustive. If you had another page to spare, we might try to offer explanations of why divorce petitions, which numbered 998 in 1913, rose to 5085 in 1919, and even (ind a corner for a short essay in psychology, based on Ihe text that while 659 men were tried for bigamy in 1919 only 248 women were indicted for that offence. In 1913, the records show, 1.39,000 convicted prisoners were received into the country's gaols. One would hardly believe that it was wholly owing to greater moral elevation that in 1919 the number was ony 31,032. The figures for 1918 were actually the smallest on record —27,787. Take these, figures by themselves and what an argument in support of the contention that a great reformation had been worked would they afford. In such fashion statistics arc often employed •by people more zealous about particular propaganda than about truth. For part of the explanation we have to turn to an Act of 1914, which made it obligatory upon minor courts to allow time for payment of fines. Now let us sec the result. In 1913, courts of summary jurisdiction imposed fines in 502,554'cases, and in default of payment 75,152 persons went to prison, as compared with only 8000 persons imprisoned for non-payment of lines in 1919. Happily, after making the fullest allowance for what is due to an alteration of Governmental methods, there is still a Trig margin on the side of improved law-ahidingness. In this connection let us say that good wages conditions helped, as they always do, to bring down larcenies. There were 50,159 dishonest cases recorded in 1913; in 1919 the number fell to i0,7G3.