[Reprinted from Boston Transcript of December 5, 1913]

There has been a steady decline in the prison population in England and Wales in the last ten years. During the year which ended on March 31 last there were fewer commitments in those parts of Great Britain than in any previous year covered by statistical records. According to the deductions made by the editor of The Lancet from the annual reports of the Commissioners of Prisons and Directors of Convict Prisons, this condition of affairs is to be attributed to several causes: The present higher standard of conduct, a more humane tendency in society, general prosperity, and a wider choice of alternative penalties.

“In any moral inquisition,” says the editor, “such as is generally regarded as one of the most important functions of statistical inquiry in the modern state, it is natural that a special degree of interest should attach to the statistics of criminality. These statistics seem at first sight to offer a direct and positive measure of the moral health of the community: and the assumption that they have this significance is in fact so commonly made by popular opinion that any considerable oscillation in their movement is usually interpreted without further question as an index of a corresponding change in public morals.

“In connection with criminality, however, there is even more need than in the case of other social phenomena to bear in mind the proverbial limitations of statistical evidence, especially when drawn from a limited area or when they refer wholly to some single one among the many aspects of this complex question.

“It may be useful to recall these qualifying considerations in judging of the real significance of the remarkable decline in the prison population, to which attention is specially drawn in the latest annual report of the Commissioners of Prisons and Directors of Prisons. From that report it appears that during the year ended March 31, 1913, the number of commitments to prison in England and Wales was lower than in any year of which there is statistical record. Moreover, as the commissioners show by a comparative table giving the numbers of the prison population over a series of years, this shrinkage is not due to any sudden and exceptional causes operative within the last twelve months, but is, on the contrary, a continuation of a downward movement which has been evident throughout the last decade.

“Obviously, this steady diminution in the number of persons sent to jail is in itself an extremely gratifying fact, and it would, of course, be still more satisfactory if we could infer from it that the moral tone of the community has been improving in anything like the same measure.

“There are, fortunately, good reasons for thinking that in many respects the standard of conduct prevalent nowadays is very probably higher than it was even in the memory of the present generation, and we may perhaps in an indirect way find support for this view in the falling numbers of the prison population, in the sense that this phenomena is doubtless evidence of a humaner tendency in society, of a more careful discrimination in its way of dealing with those who fail to conform to its laws.

“To go further, and to assume that these statistics are proof of a real decrease in delinquency, is, however, a very different matter, and is much more than the evidence will warrant. The statistics of imprisonment, it must be remembered, are peculiarly misleading.

“To a greater extent even than is the case with other statistics of criminality, the oscillations in the numbers of the prison population are affected by fluctuations in economic conditions; for the rise or fall in general prosperity influences not merely the number of offenses committed, but also the proportion of these offenses which will be compensated by the payment of fines. A year, therefore, of booming trade, such as last year was in so conspicuous a degree, will ordinarily be a year in which the forms of illegality that are numerically of most importance, such as crimes of acquisitiveness and parasite offences generally, will be fewest, and in which also the proportion of petty offenders who pay fines will be highest.

“These two influences, both tending in the same direction, have probably been the most important factors in bringing about the decline in imprisonment. But their effect has certainly been helped by another tendency which the student of sociology will note with interest and approval—the tendency, that is to say, to be more sparing than formerly in the use of this particular mode of punishment. Public opinion has changed considerably within the last few years with regard to the value of imprisonment, more particularly in its application to certain categories of offenders, and in harmony with these newer and better views the law has provided a wider choice of alternative penalties.

“As a consequence, some classes of offenders have already ceased to be sent to jail, and in the case of several other classes imprisonment is merely retained as a violent remedy to be tried only when milder and more appropriate methods have proved unsuccessful. The increasing use of the probation act and the establishment of Juvenile Courts under the children’s act may be specially instanced to illustrate this point; these changes in the law have operated powerfully to decrease the number of commitments to prison. And it may be presumed that if the provisions of the mental deficiency act are used as they ought to be in dealing with weak-minded delinquents and drunkards, there will be a further decrease in the population of our jails, in which these troublesome recidivists have hitherto bulked so largely.

“In the main, then, we may take it that the diminution in the prison population, in so far as it is not accounted for by temporary variations in the economic factors of crime, is due to a changed public opinion which no longer regards the jail as a social panacea. Among the influences which have contributed to bring about this saner attitude, one of the most important has been the clearer perception of what should be the true function of imprisonment, a perception which necessarily leads to closer scrutiny of the conditions that determine the effective performance of that function; and on these points our knowledge has been considerably widened of recent years, thanks to the more scientific spirit which has been introduced into the penal administration of this country.

“The record of Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise and his colleagues in this work of reform should therefore entitle them to speak authoritatively regarding the application of this method of treatment which they have done so much to render really corrective and reformatory. And they will certainly demand that the present abuse of imprisonment shall be amended, and that an end shall be made of the futile and pernicious system of repeated short sentences for petty offences.

“How great is the extent of this evil may be gathered from the commissioners’ statement that of the prisoners received from the ordinary courts during last year no less than 121,126 or 80.6 per cent. of the total number committed were sentenced to terms of one month or under. These amazing figures are certainly sufficient proof that there is need of some statutory alteration of the existing laws to prevent the continuance of the useless and mischievous practice; and it is satisfactory to learn from the commissioners that there is a prospect of legislative action on the matter in the near future.”