It is very commonly believed that destitution is a powerful factor in the production of crime; we shall therefore start upon this inquiry by considering the extent to which destitution is responsible for offences against person and property.  A definition of what is meant by destitution will assist in clearing the ground.  It is a definition which is not at all difficult to formulate; one destitute person is remarkably like another, and what applies to one applies with a considerable degree of accuracy to all.  We shall, therefore, define a destitute person as a person who is without house or home, who has no work, who is able and willing to work but can get none, and has nothing but starvation staring him in the face.  Is any serious amount of crime due to the desperation of people in a position such as this?  In order to answer this question it is necessary, in the first place, to ask what kind of crime such persons will be most likely to commit.  It is most improbable that they will be crimes against the person, such as homicide or assault; it will not be drunkenness, because, on the assumption of their destitution, they will possess no money to spend.  In short, the offences a person in a state of destitution is most likely to commit are begging and theft.  What proportion of the total volume of crime is due to these two offense?  This is the first question we shall have to answer.  The second is, to what extent are begging and theft the results of destitution?  An adequate elucidation of these two points will supply a satisfactory explanation of the part played by destitution in the production of crime.

The total number of cases tried in England and Wales either summarily or on indictment during the year 1887-88 amounted to 726,698.  Out of this total eight per cent. were cases of offences against property excluding cases of malicious damage, and seven per cent. consisted of offences against the Vagrancy Acts.  Putting these two classes of offences together we arrive at the result that out of a total number of crimes of all kinds committed in England and Wales, 15 per cent. may conceivably be due to destitution.  This is a very serious percentage, and if it actually represented the number of persons who commit crime from sheer want of the elementary necessaries of life, the confession would have to be made that the economic condition of the country was deplorable.  But is it a fact that destitution in the sense we have been using the word is the cause of all these offences?  This is the next question we have to solve, and the answer springing from it will reveal the true position of the case.