We see, indeed, a constant diminution of crime for the
period between 1860 and 1870, followed (after the
statistical disturbance of the terrible year 1870-1) by a period
of serious and continued increase of crime, resulting from social
and economic conditions, as shown especially by the increase of
vagrancy and theft since 1875.
All these general facts go to prove the close and intimate
connection between crime and the aggregate of its various
constituents. So that, without pursuing more detailed inquiries
into certain social factors of crime, which are capable of
statistical enumeration, such as the increase in the number of the
police, the abundance or scarcity of corn and wine, the spread of
drunkenness, family circumstances, increase of personal
possessions, the facility or otherwise of the settlement of
disputes, commercial and industrial crises, the rate of wages, the
variation from year to year of the general conditions of
existence, and so forth, coincident with the development of
education, encouragements to thrift and the organisation of
charity, we must now proceed to draw from these statistical data
the most important conclusions of criminal sociology.
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