Crime and Its Causes | Page 7

criminal statistics as one man sentenced to a term of eighteen months.
The daily average, in other words, depends upon the length of sentence
prisoners receive, and not upon the number of persons committed to
prison, or upon the number of crimes committed during the year. Let us
look then at the number of persons committed to Local Prisons, and we
shall be in a position to judge if crime is decreasing in England or not.
We shall go back twenty years and take the quinquennial totals as they
are recorded in the judicial statistics:--
Total of the 5 years, 1868 to 1872, 774,667. Total of the 5 years, 1873
to 1877, 866,041. Total of the 5 years, 1884 to 1888, 898,486.
If statistics are to be allowed any weight at all, these figures
incontestably mean that the total volume of crime is on the increase in
England as well as everywhere else. It is fallacious to suppose that the
authorities here are gaining the mastery over the delinquent population.
Such a supposition is at once refuted by the statistics which have just
been tabulated, and these are the only statistics which can be implicitly

relied upon for testing the position of the country with regard to crime.
Seeing, then, that the total amount of crime is regularly growing, how
is the decrease in the daily average of persons in prison to be accounted
for?
This decrease may be accounted for in two ways. It may be shown that
although the number of people committed to prison is on the increase,
the nature of the offences for which these people are convicted is not so
grave. Or, in the second place, it may be shown that, although the
crimes committed now are equally serious with those committed
twenty years ago, the magistrates and judges are adopting a more
lenient line of action, and are inflicting shorter sentences after a
conviction. Let us for a moment consider the proposition that crime is
not so grave now as it was twenty years ago. In order to arrive at a
fairly accurate conclusion on this matter, we have only to look at the
number of offences of a serious nature reported to the police.
Comparing the number of cases of murder, attempts to murder,
manslaughter, shooting at, stabbing and wounding, and adding to these
offences the crimes of burglary, housebreaking, robbery, and
arson--comparing all these cases reported to the police for the five
years 1870-1874, with offences of a like character reported in the five
years 1884-1888, we find that the proportion of grave offences to the
population was, in many cases, as great in the latter period as in the
former.[7] This shows clearly that crime, while it is increasing in extent,
is not materially decreasing in seriousness; and the chief reason the
prison population exhibits a smaller daily average is to be found in the
fact that judges are now pronouncing shorter sentences than was the
custom twenty years ago. We are not left in the dark upon this point;
the judges themselves frequently inform the public that they have taken
to shortening the terms of imprisonment. The extent to which sentences
have been shortened within the last twenty years can easily be
ascertained by comparing the committals to prison and the daily
average of the quinquenniad 1868-72 with the committals and the daily
average of the quinquenniad 1884-88. A comparison between these two
periods shows that the length of imprisonment has decreased
twenty-six per cent. In other words, whereas a man used to receive a
sentence of twelve months' imprisonment, he now receives a sentence
of nine months; and whereas he used to get a sentence of one month, he

now gets twenty-one days. If it he a serious offence, or if the criminal
be a habitual offender, he now receives eighteen months' imprisonment,
whereas he used to receive five years' penal servitude. As far as most
judges and stipendiary magistrates are concerned, sentences of
imprisonment have decreased in recent years more than twenty-six per
cent.; and if there was a corresponding movement on the part of
Chairmen of Quarter Sessions, the average decrease in the length of
sentences would amount to fifty per cent. But it is a notorious fact that
amateur judges are, with few exceptions, more inclined to pronounce
heavy sentences than professional men.
[7] SERIOUS CASES REPORTED TO THE POLICE IN
PROPORTION TO THE POPULATION. ANNUAL AVERAGE FOR
FIVE YEARS:--
Murder. Attempts to Murder. Manslaughter 1870-74 1 to 196,946 1 to
441,158 1 to 92,756 1884-88 1 to 168,897 1 to 418,923 1 to 116,463
Shooting, Stabbing, &c. Burglary. Housebreaking. 1870-74 1 to 35,033
1 to 10,188 1 to 17,538 1884-88 1 to 38,007 1 to 7,892 1 to 11,911
Robbery. Arson. 1870-74 1 to 43,247 1 to