Criminal statistics

“ Criminal statistics show that crime increases in the aggregate, with more or less notable oscillations from year to year, rising or falling in successive waves. Thus it is evident that the level of criminality in any one year is determined by the different conditions of the physical and social environment, combined with the hereditary tendencies and occasional impulses of the individual, in obedience to a law which I have called, in analogy with chemical phenomena, the law of criminal saturation. ”

“ It is natural, therefore, that criminal sociology, after studying the individual aspect of the natural genesis of crime, should have recourse to criminal statistics for the study of the social aspect. ”

“ In the fields of criminal statistics, also, we need far more light even if such light shall only indicate clearly that comprehensive and accurate criminal statistics are practically impossible to collate. To the efforts of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology to advance in accuracy, in dignity, and in usefulness our store of information as to crime and its treatment, the national conference should give full credit and strong encouragement. ”

“ To punish crime is all very well; but punishment is not an absolute remedy; its deterrent action is limited, and other methods besides punishment must be adopted if society wishes to gain the mastery over the criminal population. What those methods should be can only be ascertained after the most searching preliminary inquiries into the main factors of crime. It ought, therefore, to be a weighty part of the business of criminal statistics to offer as full information as possible, not only respecting crimes and punishments, but much more respecting criminals. Every criminal has a life history ”

“ Always a certain percentage will go down under the pressure of a closely competitive social scheme that recks but little of moral weaklings, and less of physical slackers; but such bear serious relation to criminal statistics in the sense only that they are dragged down to habitual crime appreciably by criminal recidivists; by repeating felons who forage on society by choice, who make no bones about it, who shout stout defense of it, and who glory in it.
With the latter class of criminals it is up to America to deal, and to do it now. ”

“ In his introduction to the "Criminal Statistics for 1898," recently published by the Home Office, Mr C. E. Troup, of that Department, says that the general conclusions to be drawn from a study of the comparative tables which form part of the statistical returns, may be summed up as follows—"That the actual number of crimes brought into the courts has diminished appreciably during the last thirty years; that, if the increase of population is taken into account, the decrease in crime becomes very marked ”

“ Perhaps the highest value of criminal statistics consists in the light they may throw upon the practical effects produced by penal legislation, by judicial procedure and by the administration of police and detective officers. For example, within the past decade, radical changes in the administration of justice have been established in this country by laws relating to juvenile offenders, and by the extended use of the suspended sentence and probation. ”

“ A movement is now in progress which may greatly widen the scope of criminal statistics. It has long been realized that many persons sentenced for crime are feeble-minded and seriously defective; mentally and physically but, within the past few years, the conviction has been growing that our penal system is radically imperfect in that it provides no adequate means for deciding whether or not a person on trial for crime is really responsible criminally. ”

“ The more carefully we look into the matter, the more difficult it becomes to apply this test. We find that even at the outset. Every civilised community has its own way of dealing with criminal statistics and the discrepancies thus introduced are so great that this fact alone makes comparisons almost impossible. It is scarcely necessary to point out that varying skill and thoroughness in the detection of crime, and varying severity in the attitude towards it, necessarily count for much. Of not less significance is the legislative activity of the community ”

“ As a matter of fact, when we follow the periodic variations of crime, with its measured growth and decrease, we cannot fail to conclude that these constant and constantly occurring variations depend upon a corresponding variation of anthropological and physical factors. For, whilst criminal statistics are far from showing the regularity which Quetelet claimed with much exaggeration, the proportional figures in regard to the bearings of age, sex, calling, &c., upon criminality exhibit very insignificant variations from year to year. ”

“ But whatever classification may be accepted, we shall always have, as the fundamental axiom of criminal anthropology, this variety in the types of criminals, which must henceforth be indispensable to all who are theoretically or practically concerned with crime.
CHAPTER II. THE DATA OF CRIMINAL STATISTICS. FOR moral and social facts, unlike physical and biological facts, experiment is very difficult, and frequently even impossible; observation in this domain brings the greatest aid to scientific research. And statistics are amongst the most efficacious instruments of such observation. ”

“ The criminal statistics cult blinds its votaries. It is the crime committed by professional criminals that keeps the community in a state of siege. The professional criminals are few and I may add they are well known to the police. The theory that these men commit crimes under the overpowering pressure of habit, or of impulse, is altogether mistaken. They pursue a career of crime because, as Sir Alfred Wills expresses it, they calculate and accept its risks. And just in proportion as you increase the risks you will diminish the number of those who will face them. ”

“ And that is why statistical methods are necessary for the scientific study of the criminal. For only by measurement can difference of degree be evaluated; and statistics is merely a refined instrument for making measurements."
The word 'criminal,' strictly-speaking, only designates the fact that an individual has been imprisoned: that he has committed a crime. The object of this inquiry is to determine whether certain constitutional, as well as environmental, factors play a part in the production of the criminal act. ”

“ As far as criminality is concerned the answer can be perfectly positive. The number of offenses that do not appear in the criminal statistics is certainly large; they are, however, chiefly insignificant misdemeanors, such as insults, trifling assaults, petty thefts, etc. These would have little value in determining the etiology of crime, even if the statistics included them all. Serious crimes, on the other hand, in the majority of cases, without any doubt appear in the statistics. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That these causes do to a great extent defeat the preventive effect of our penal laws, is proved by the tale of our criminal statistics, which reveal the fact that most of our crime is committed by those who [100] have once been punished, and that of general crime about 77 per cent. is committed with impunity. But if so large a proportion of crimes pass unpunished altogether, it is evident that society depends much less for its general security upon its punishments than is commonly supposed. ”

“ It is quite certain, for instance, that the spread of education, of which Beccaria wrote in terms of such despair, means the diminution of crime; and as the majority of crimes are committed between the ages of twenty and forty, it may be predicted that from the present year onwards the great Act of 1870 will bear increasing fruit in lowering our criminal statistics. More too may be hoped for from the electric light than from any multiplication of prisons. ”

“ Statistics in any field are useful, but usually for broad generalizations, and they must always be interpreted by men of experience who are not interested in the results. Still, on the whole, it is probable that statistics show that crime is on the increase. What have reason and human experience to say on the subject?
We should always bear in mind that crime can never mean anything except the violation of law, when the violator is convicted; that it has no necessary reference to the general moral condition of man. Is the number of criminal convictions growing, and if so why? ”

“ It is a great pity as Chief Magistrate McAdoo remarks, that the important strides toward significant criminal statistics that are being made in the magistrates’ courts can not be combined and developed, together with data from the higher criminal courts. ”

“ This statement, like almost all the discussions of criminal statistics, ignores the important point that as communities improve, acts formerly not covered by the law become statutory crimes; and hence that the more civilized a state the more likely it is that criminals will be convicted, and the larger will be the apparent proportion of criminals. ”

“ The criminal statistics have exposed this fallacy as completely, in reference to the different degrees of depravity in different parts of the empire, as the registrar-general's returns have, in regard to the different degrees of salubrity in employments, and mortality in rural districts and manufacturing places. It now distinctly appears that crime is greatly more prevalent in proportion to the numbers of the people in densely peopled than thinly inhabited localities, and that it is making far more rapid progress in the former situation than the latter. ”

“ In 1913 the City Council Committee on Crime made a study of crimes in Chicago and encountered the same difficulty. Says the report of this Committee: "The police and criminal judicial statistics in Chicago are wholly incomplete and are not even assembled or published by any authority." Further commenting on this inadequacy, it says:
Unfortunately, there is in Illinois no central bureau of criminal statistics through which statistics from the police department, the courts, the jails, prisons, and the probation department are collected and correlated. ”

“ While the classical schools of criminal law have always studied the crime and neglected the criminal, the object of the positivist school was, in the first place, to study the criminal, so that, instead of the crime being regarded merely as a juridical fact, it must be studied with the aid of biology, of psychology, and of criminal statistics as a natural and social fact, transforming the old criminal law into a criminal sociology. ”

“ Civilization has raised many things formerly considered as, perhaps, immoral and as offenses against the moral law to well-defined crimes. The result is, that we are constantly increasing the work of criminal courts; the number of sentences is thus increased comparatively, even when the volume of crime, as shown by the comparisons of crime per se, may decrease. So truthful statistics may show absolutely false conclusions, unless the elements are intelligently and honestly used. ”

“ Of course the statistics of morality deal with quantities not qualities, but in the course of statistical examination the latter are met with. So, e.g., examinations into the relation of crime to school-attendance and education, into the classes that show most suicides, etc., connect human qualities with statistical data. The time is certainly not far off when we shall seek for the proper view of the probability of a certain assumption with regard to some rare crime, doubtful suicide, extraordinary psychic phenomena, etc., with the help of a statistical table. ”

“ From what has already been said as to the immense difficulty of comparing the criminal statistics of various countries, it follows as a matter of course that the figures contained in them cannot be used as a means of ascertaining the position which belongs to each nation respectively in the scale of morality. ”

“ Whilst we have no intention of offering a body of comparative statistics, but only of giving a simple indication of the periodic movement of crime, these data, which do not render it easy to compare one country with another, though they are intimately related so far as each particular country is concerned, suffice to exhibit a few facts of some considerable importance. ”

“ It is a curious fact that similar illusions have existed in all countries through the same causes and prejudices which have been mentioned above. In France, for instance, we often find that the keepers of the seals, reporting on volumes of the excellent and valuable series of criminal statistics since the year 1826, occasionally remark on these oscillatory diminutions, and make a point of treating them as

signs of a constant and general tendency, which succeeding years have always contradicted. ”

“ The experimental school, accepting the fundamental and incontestible idea, apart from its numerical and optimistic exaggerations, that the statistics of crime must be considered in regard to the growth and activity of the population, has opened up an entirely new channel of fruitful observations, in the classification and study of the natural factors of crime. ”