IS CRIME INCREASING? 401 



ures, and conclusions unsparingly, and declares as the best opinion 

 lie has been able to form on a review of all the facts, and from the 

 expressions of persons whose practical connection with the subject 

 gives weight to their views, that crime is decreasing. He cites 

 the returns of the prison population since 1877 as showing a con- 

 tinuous annual decrease, which none of the explanations offered 

 adequately account for except those which ascribe it to the de- 

 pression of trade cutting off the supply of money for drinking 

 with, or to the growing dislike of a certain class of criminals for 

 life in prison — both of which imply a decrease of crime. He as- 

 cribes the decrease to Christian philanthropy, which he says has 

 never attained a higher development than now, when it is per- 

 haps one of the principal features of the present stage of civiliza- 

 tion. It " has led to an entirely new way of dealing with crime — 

 namely, by prevention instead of by punishment ; and one of the 

 principal results of this philanthropic idea is the establishment 

 of industrial schools, in which young persons who seem likely to 

 fall into crime and to develop into adult criminals may be trained 

 into a better way and made into useful members of society. 



" It has led to those movements for providing better dwellings, 

 and otherwise raising the condition of those who are sometimes 

 called ' the disinherited/ sometimes ' the submerged/ which help 

 to remove temptations to crime, and purify the atmosphere in 

 which those who may develop into criminals have been compelled 

 to live. 



" It is perhaps one of the most curious features in the proof 

 offered of the increase of crime that the adoption and develop- 

 ment of the very means by which it is diminished are cited as 

 corroborations of the doctrine that it has increased — among them 

 being the increase in the number of juveniles committed to in- 

 dustrial schools. To show this we are given the number of those 

 committed to 'reformatories and industrial schools' added to- 

 gether. The reformatories are penal and reformatory institu- 

 tions for young persons convicted of crime, and correspond, 

 therefore, to prisons. The industrial schools, on the other hand, 

 are preventive institutions for children who have not been con- 

 victed, but might fall into crime for want of proper care and 

 training. To mix the two together obviously obscures the facts, 

 and the more thoroughly because the committals to reformatories 

 have decreased during the last ten years, so that the increase in 

 the united numbers is solely due to the development of the dis- 

 tinctly preventive institutions, to which there is little doubt the 

 decrease in crime and criminals is largely due, and which are the 

 product of the Christian civilization of which Rousseau thought 

 so little. In fact, mixing the two together is as if an increased 

 prevalence of small-pox was proved by adding together the num- 



VOL. XLIII. — 27 



