IS CRIME INCREASING? 403 



The police every year furnish, a return of the number of the 

 criminal classes. A comparison of the numbers given in these 

 returns affords what seems to be irresistible testimony of an im- 

 mense improvement. Since the year 1867-'68 the decrease in their 

 number has been practically continuous. Is it conceivable that, 

 while the criminal classes have diminished in this manner, crime 

 has increased ? 



The direct testimony of the police themselves may be cited. 

 The commissioner of police of the metropolis adduces facts and 

 figures from which it " appears that there was greater security for 

 person and property in the metropolis during 1890 than in any 

 previous year included in the statistical returns " ; and this, not- 

 withstanding the increasing growth of the city at the rate of a 

 million a decade, makes it continually more difficult for the police 

 to deal with crime. The chief constable of Liverpool says that 

 " never since the first publication of returns of crime in Liverpool 

 (i. e., since 1857) have the statistics disclosed so small an amount 

 of crime or so large a success in making criminals amenable to 

 justice as those for the year ended the 29th of September, 1891." 

 The report for 1892 is to the same effect, except that crimes of 

 violence had slightly increased. 



Mr. Grosvenor, of the Home Office, in a paper on The Abate- 

 ment of Crime, read to the Statistical Society in 1890, spoke of 

 the abatement having taken place in nearly all classes of crime 

 during the last twenty years ; of the " reduction in the number of 

 known thieves and other suspected persons at large, as well as of 

 houses of bad character which they frequent," and of the extraor- 

 dinary diminution in the number of receivers of stolen goods. 

 Adding to this the fact of the great increase in the population of 

 the country, " we must admit," he says, " that the many agencies 

 enlisted for the purpose of diminishing the number of criminals 

 have been most successfully applied, and the result can not fail to 

 afford the utmost satisfaction and encouragement to all who are 

 anxious for the improved moral and physical advancement of our 

 nation." 



Before considering the figures that measure the fluctuation in 

 the actual crimes, Sir Edmund Du Cane tries to define what is 

 meant by the word crime as used in the discussion. One studying 

 the tables with a view to ascertaining the fluctuations in crime, 

 looking merely at the total number at the foot of them, would 

 probably conclude that the total volume of crime has increased 

 very materially, for the tables show apparently a very consider- 

 able increase ; " but if we look a little more closely at these totals 

 of which the figures are made up, we see that a very large propor- 

 tion of these offenses are not ' crimes ' at all, as the word is or- 

 dinarily understood. For instance, offenses against the Education 



