[4] Recent Economic Changes, p. 345.

Nearly all the chief statisticians abroad tell the same tale with respect to the growth of crime on the Continent.  Dr. Mischler of Vienna, and Professor von Liszt of Marburg draw a deplorable picture of the increase of crime in Germany.  Professor von Liszt, in a recent article,[5] says, that fifteen million persons have been convicted by the German criminal courts within the last ten years; and, according to him, the outlook for the future is sombre in the last degree.  In France, the criminal problem is just as formidable and perplexing as it is in Germany; M. Henri Joly estimates that crime has increased in the former country 133 per cent. within the last half century, and is still steadily rising.  Taking Victoria as a typical Australasian colony, we find that even in the Antipodes, which are not vexed to the same extent as Europe with social and economic difficulties, crime is persistently raising its head, and although it does not increase quite as rapidly as the population, it is nevertheless a more menacing danger among the Victorian colonists than it is at home.[6]

    [5] Zeitschrift fuer die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft ix.
    472, sg.

    [6] See Statistical Register for Victoria, Part viii.

Is England an exception to the rest of the world with respect to 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 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.