The records include photographs, descriptions, and particulars not only of licence-holders and supervisees, but of every person who has been convicted twice or more times of any crime, with a few exceptions, and of all persons sentenced to hard labour for a month or more.
They are a veritable "Who's Who" of the criminal world, and go even further than that useful work of reference in supplying intimate details of the appearance and idiosyncrasies of their subjects.
But the keeping of recidivist records is only one part of the business of the Criminal Record Office. This is the department which is responsible for keeping a watchful eye on those people the public love to call "ticket-of-leave men," but who are officially known as licence-holders or supervisees.
These are convicts who, through good conduct in prison, have been released before the expiration of the full term of their sentence, or persons ordered at the time of their conviction to undergo a period of police supervision after they leave prison. This class is composed very largely of an elusive gentry, and to keep track of their comings and goings is no simple matter when they have reason to vanish for a season.
There are usually about a thousand of these in London; the exact number in 1913 was 811. Strict regulations are laid down, which they must observe for the protection of the community; but, in practice, they are afforded every facility for earning an honest living.
Ever and anon the old myth recurs that "ticket-of-leave men" are hounded and harassed by the police so that ultimately they are thrown back to their old life in sheer despair.
Listen to what the "Police Code" says:
"It is of great importance to avoid giving licence-holders and supervisees any ground for alleging that they are being interfered with by the police, or in any way prevented from leading an honest life. When it is necessary to make enquiries at their addresses or places of business it is desirable, if possible, that they should be made by officers in plain clothes who are not known in the district, and great care should be taken that the nature of the inquiry should not be disclosed to anyone other than the licence-holder or supervisee himself."
That regulation is carried out with a rigid regard for both the spirit and the letter.
The relations of the detective force with the men they watch are quite friendly. It is a matter of policy that they should be so. Yet the situation has its humours at times.