On the other hand--apart from the
transformation of crimes of violence into crimes of craft and
fraud, due to the increase of movable property--the decrease of
offences against property is no more than the manifest effect of
an artificial change of judicial procedure, summary proceedings
taking the place of trial by jury.
An alternation, which is not invalidated by exceptions here and
there, has been observed in the criminality of different
countries, in the periodic movement of crimes and offences against
property and those against the person, of such a kind that years
of increase in the former usually answer to a diminution in the
latter, and vice versa. The principal factors in the annual
increase of theft, such as scarcity and extremes of weather, cause
a corresponding diminution of violent assaults and bodily harm, of
homicides and indecent assaults, and vice versa. On the
other hand, offences against property, which are very numerous,
contribute most of all to the total of annual crime; so that the
maximum of 1880 in Italy, as well as in France, Belgium and
Austria, is especially due to the great severity of the
winter of 1879-80, which in Italy coincided with an
agricultural crisis, attested by the very high price of corn.
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