Crime and Its Causes | Page 7

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 54,075 1884-88 1 to 70,767 1 to 77,018
This table shows that since 1870-74 there has been an increase in murder, attempts to murder, burglary, and housebreaking, and a decrease in manslaughter, robbery, and arson. The decrease in shooting, stabbing, wounding, &c., is very small. (Cf. Judicial Statistics for 1874 and 1888, p. xvi.)
We have now arrived at the conclusion that crime is just as serious in its character as it was twenty