The Washington herald., 1911-02-16
Crime in England.

THE English people are becoming
more addicted to crime. Some cause
has been at work in the twentieth CEN
tury which was not operative in the last
decades Of the nineteenth to promote
an increase of crime. What is this
cause?"
Such are the propositions stated, and
such is the question discussed in the
report on criminal statistics issued by
the British government. The course of
indictable offenses shows that up to 1899
the general tendency to crime in Great
Britain was downward. Since 1899, the
line steadily has moved upward. The
annual average of crimes for the period
ISo4-S was 52,eoS; the number for 1909
was 67,I4o. The average number of
crimes per 10000 of the population was
100 for the period ISo4-S; for the year
1909 it was I87.
These are unpleasant facts. The esti-
mated number of habitual criminals at
large is fairly permanent, according to
the report. The ascending line of crime
is not caused by them. Nor is it caused
by professional criminals. The number
of larcenies from the person, the form
of crime which requires skill and train
ing, has been going down, but there is,
in one form or another, more pocket
picking and stealing. Dishonesty has
become more prevalent among the COM
munity at large The report also points
out that marked characteristic of re-
cent years has been growing reluctance
to prosecute, and that, therefore, the
real increase of criminality probably is
greater than appears in the statistics.
The cause cannot be increasing pow
ertv, for statistics show the reverse. 1t
cannot be drink, for the drink bill has
shown an equally marked decline. 1t
cannot be the decline of church attend
ance, for this is a movement which set
in earlier. 1t cannot be the schools, for
education has improved. What, then, is
the cause? The author of the report
has a decided opinion. He finds it in
"a relaxation of the moral standard, in
a new mood of compassioni for the
criminal, which is carried so far as to
blunt the sense of indignation at the
crime" He couples this fact with an
other which has resulted from it the
relaxation of punitive discipline, which
may have deprived the prison of its ter
rors. A community, he says, that no longer
resents crime, and which has learned to
feel nothing but compassion for the
criminal, would in-time inevitably find
itself faced by a food of criminals
against which police and prison authori-
ties would struggle in vain.
There is something, we dare say, in
this view, but the author perhaps exag-
gerates. He places much of the blame
on newspapers and the novelists. The
stories of Raffles and Arsene Lupin are
cited as investing crime with an atmos-
phere of romance; he might in fairness
have added the corresponding romance
with which Sherlock Holmes has in
vested the detection OF crime. He ad-
mits that the newspapers, as whole,
devote not more space. but less, to re-
ports of criminal cases
The marked growth, since 1893, of a
strong sentiment of compassion for the
criminal. which the report singles out as
the cause of the growth of crime, may
have something to do with it. but other
causes must be sought for in tendencies
Of less creditsble nature. II this be
an age Of increasing dishonesty in Eng