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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 76

[introduction]

page break

From almost every part of the world comes the cry that crime is increasing. "In France, in Germany, in Italy, in Belgium, in Spain, in the United States, the tide of criminality is becoming higher steadily and rapidly," says Dr. Havelock Ellis. "That crime is on the increase, out of proportion to population, is indicated in many ways," says General Brinkeschoff in his address to the National Prison Association of America in 1894. Morrison, in his book on "Crime and its Causes," gives the same testimony. Only insular Great Britain seems to be free from this alarming symptom. The Australasian colonies certainly are not. In New Zealand the increase of crime seems to be assuming a peculiarly dangerous character. Yet the expenditure on means for its repression—the magistracy, the police, the prison and reformatory system—is unstinted, and, indeed, enormous in proportion to our income. How is it, then, that the result is not more satisfactory? That is the question that I propose to attempt to answer in this paper. I propose to enquire whether our large expenditure is so directed as to produce the best possible effects, and to make some suggestions as to points in which it seems to me our present system may be materially improved.

It is necessary, however, to premise that I am not now dealing with the far more important question of the prevention of crime. Public opinion is rapidly focussing page 10 itself upon what I should call the kernel of the whole question—false and insufficient educational methods. But my present object is much more limited-to deal only with the cure of existing crime.

What applies to prisons must necessarily have some bearing also on reformatories, industrial schools, refuges, penitentiaries, and the like: but it is of the prisons only that I now speak.