crime? Many people are of opinion that it is, and the idea is at
present diligently fostered on the platform and in the press that we
have at last found out the secret of dealing successfully with the
criminal population. As far as I can ascertain, this belief is based
upon the statement that the daily average of persons in prison is
constantly going down. Inasmuch, as there was a daily average of over
20,000 persons in prison in 1878, and a daily average of about 15,000
in 1888, many people immediately jump at the conclusion that crime is
diminishing. But the daily average is no criterion whatever of the
rise and fall of crime. Calculated on the principle of daily average,
twelve men sentenced to prison for one month each, will not figure so
largely in 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