CHAPTER VII.
The Crooks' Clearing-House.
Many high authorities have argued that the best way to prevent crime is to keep all known criminals under lock and key, as we do lunatics. The theory may be right or wrong, but it is not yet possible to put it into practice.
So Scotland Yard does the next best thing, and exercises a quiet, unwearying, persistent surveillance on those hundreds of persons who are likely to resume their depredations on society when they are released from prison.
For over fifty years—since 1862—there has been accumulating a library of biography on which prison governors and police officials have worked, which must by now include every living criminal by profession who has enjoyed the hospitality of the State.
The files—immense, dirty brown covered albums—each containing 6,000 photographs—overflow through room after room and corridor after corridor. There are smaller volumes with duplicate photographs, 500 in each, which give particulars of marks or physical peculiarities. Hundreds of thousands of records are kept, mostly illustrated by the inevitable full and side face photographs, and each is kept up-to-date with scrupulous care.
The Convict Supervision Office, with its subsidiary Habitual Criminals Registry, has within the last year or two been amalgamated with the Finger-print Section under the general title of the Criminal Record Office. Although the two departments work in unison and are, to a certain point, interdependent, their work has to be conducted in sub-departments.
The Habitual Criminals Registry—I retain the old title for convenience—is a sort of British Museum of crime. It is a central bureau that is constantly being consulted from all parts of the kingdom, and not seldom from all parts of the world. It has to be ready at any moment to lay its hands on the record of any criminal that may be demanded, and in this it is immensely helped by the Finger-print Department, which can usually identify the person and supply the number by which he is known.
It sometimes happens, however, that no finger-prints are available. Then search has to be made under the old system. The records are grouped by the height of their subjects and the colour of their eyes and hair. Thus, if a prisoner on remand is five feet nine, with blue eyes and brown hair, the margin of search is limited to those indexed under those characteristics.