There may be, and there probably are, many other and even more substantial reasons for discrediting statistics that are commonplaces to experts in crime. But those that have been cited, and which are at once suggested by common sense, fully suffice to show the impossibility of arriving at satisfactory conclusions on the basis of statistical tables published by the authorities.
The Blue-book containing the latest judicial returns attempts to deal with this question of the increase or decrease of juvenile crime; figures being only available, however, from the year 1893. 'To answer this question,' it is stated, 'it is necessary to ascertain the proportion which youthful offenders bear to the total number of convicted persons. This is given in the following table, where it will be seen that the proportion of offenders under the age of twenty-one remains almost constant:
'PROPORTION OF YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS CONVICTED OF INDICTABLE OFFENCES TO TOTAL NUMBER OF PERSONS CONVICTED.
| Age. | 1893. | 1894. | 1895. | 1896. | 1897. | 1898. |
| Per cent. | Per cent. | Per cent. | Per cent. | Per cent. | Per cent. | |
| Under 12 | 4.6 | 4.9 | 4.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 5.6 |
| 12 and under 16 | 15.0 | 15.2 | 13.4 | 14.5 | 14.0 | 14.5 |
| 16 and under 21 | 21.2 | 22.0 | 21.8 | 19.7 | 19.5 | 20.2 |
| Total under 21 | 40.8 | 42.1 | 39.8 | 39.8 | 39.1 | 40.3 |
'The general result is that the number of youthful offenders has diminished with the general diminution of crime, but that they still bear almost the same ratio as before to the total of criminals.'
All this is, as has been pointed out, absolutely misleading. The number of persons convicted has nothing whatever to do with the increase or decrease of crime; and the proportion of youthful offenders to the total number of persons convicted is only calculated, in view of the great amount of clemency shown to young people both by magistrates and by the public, to give one a wholly false impression as to the prevalence of juvenile crime.
It would be easy to take the criminal statistics of foreign countries, and to prove from them that the education of the masses there has brought about an overwhelming increase in the proportion of crimes and offences committed by young persons under the age of twenty-one.
In Germany, Austria, France, Russia, Italy, Holland, and the United States juvenile crime has, according to statistical information, largely increased during the last quarter of a century. But, without making an exhaustive inquiry into the alterations that may have taken place in the law, the relative activity of the police, and a dozen other contingencies, it would not be honest to attempt to draw definite conclusions from these figures.
One has, after all, in these matters to fall back upon logic and common sense. There is the solid fact that youthful criminals abound in spite of education systems, and although there is a considerable leakage in respect to school-attendance, it does not follow that juvenile offenders are drawn from this truant class to a disproportionate extent. It must be remembered, on the contrary, that a great amount of non-attendance at school is due to the employment of children—especially in rural districts, where the members of School Boards are often the very people who extract most profit from child labour.
A prison chaplain of great experience, the Rev. J. W. Horsley, wrote, in his interesting work on 'Prisons and Prisoners': 'While covetousness is a factor of crime, the tools education places in the hands make crimes of greed more possible, and possible at an earlier age than in past generations. This week I got the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society to take under its care a child of ten, who had written, filled up, and cashed, a postal order that it might buy more lollipops. Increased knowledge, especially when not adequately accompanied by moral and religious education, will create new tastes, desires, and ambitions, that make for evil as well as for good. Let instruction abound, let education in its fullest sense more abound, but let us be aware of the increased power for evil as well as for good that they produce, and at any rate let us not imagine that education and crime cannot co-exist. Crime is varied, not abolished, not even most effectually decreased, by the sharpening of wits.'