IRISH CRIMINAL STATISTICS, 1877.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 309, 21 March 1879, Page 11

IRISH CRIMINAL STATISTICS, 1877.

The return of the criminal and judicial statistics for 1877 in Ireland has lately heen published, and demands notice under some of its multiform heads. For the past eleven years the number of indictable offences not disposed of summarily has steadily fallen from 9,2fi0 in 186/, to 6,328 in 1877. being a decrease of nearly one-third, and a decline of from 16.8 amongst every ten thousand of the population in ISG7 compared with 11.8 in 1877. In an estimated population of y,338-906 in Ireland in 1877 there was no sentence of death, a fact rare to be found in any other country in the world ; while in 1876 there were only four, the proportion in an equal population in England and Wales being seven, and France five. Penal servitude the next sentence in point of severity, shows 183 in Ireland in 1577 ; while the proportion to an equal population was 390, or more than twice as many in England and Wales ; and 288, or one-half more in France. Those few facts prove the comparative exemption of Ireland from grave crime, a comparison the force of which is weakened unless it is accompanied with the larger, better organized, and more effective police force for the detection and persecution of crime which exists in Ireland. Agrarian crime, diminishing for many years, has unfortunately revived and increased in the past year, or rather in the first six months of 1878, a circumstance caused, it is said, by the murder of the late Earl of Leitnm and two men who accompanied him in .Donegal Agrarian crime may be said to have reached its minimum in 187o' there being only 136 offences, a large proportion of which were the sending of threatening letters or other forms of intimidation. Dr Hancock observes that every great crime, like that of the murder of Lord Leitrim, is generally followed by an increase of such means of intimidation ; hence the temporary spread of that offence. The contrast between the prevalence of crime in the town and country districts in Ireland is very great, the metropolitan district enjoying a lamentable pre-eminence, so that, in this respect, Ireland approaches to England. Crime in Manchester in 1876 was 122 in the 10,000 ; and 97 in Dublin for an equal copulation. While, according to an enquiry held in 1873, in ten counties'of Wales and fifteen counties in England with a population equal to that of Ireland, and having slender manufacturing operations, there were upwards of seven criminals m 10,000 people, and only six, in 1877, in that number of the rural population of Ireland. The Dublin metropolitan district includes only one-fifteenth of the whole population of Ireland yet it supplies more than half the indictable offences not summarily disposed of committed in the whole Island. The analysis of Irish crime shows the powerful part which drunkenness plays in swelling the statistics, and hence the general demand for Sunday closing and other restrictions on the sale of intoxicating liquors. The suicides, largely connected with intemperance, were in England 381, and only 93 in an equal population, in Ireland ; yet verdicts of inquests in England of death from excessive drinking were only 107 against 114, in an equal population in Ireland. Amongst the large number of other than indictable offences, 248,322, proceeded against summarily, drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and common assaults, the result of intemperance, hold the first place, Ireland being considerably below England in this respect. It is very gratifying, however, to find that drunkenness shows a diminution in 1877, together with all the offences which are its offspring. On the whole the return shows that Ireland may compare favourably in morality and order with any portion of the empire or any country in the world.