: The Review Vol. 1 No. 11 November 1911 by Various National Prisoners Aid Association Publisher - Prisons Periodicals

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VOLUME I, No. 11. NOVEMBER, 1911

THE REVIEW

TEN CENTS A COPY. ONE DOLLAR A YEAR

T. F. Carver, President. Wm. F. French, Vice President. O. F. Lewis, Secretary, Treasurer and Editor Review. Edward Fielding, Chairman Ex. Committee. F. Emory Lyon, Member Ex. Committee. W. G. McClaren, Member Ex. Committee. A. H. Votaw, Member Ex. Committee. E. A. Fredenhagen, Member Ex. Committee. Joseph P. Byers, Member Ex. Committee. R. B. McCord, Member Ex. Committee.

THE STATISTICS OF CRIME

BY EUGENE SMITH

PRESIDENT PRISON ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK

In the deplorable and chaotic condition of the very sources from which all statistical matter must be drawn, it is hopeless to look for any improvement in our census statistics, unless a radical change can be effected in state administration. The records of the police, the courts, the prisons, can be made of statistical value only by the action of the state itself; and there is apparent but one method by which the state can act to this end.

There should be established in each state a permanent board or bureau of criminal statistics, whether as an independent body or as a department of the office of the attorney general or of the secretary of state. This bureau should be charged with the duty of prescribing the forms in which the records of all criminal courts, police boards and prisons shall be kept and specifying the items regarding which entries shall be made. The law creating the bureau should direct that the forms prescribed by it should be uniform as to all institutions of the same class to which they respectively apply and be binding upon all institutions within the state.

The bureau should issue general instructions governing the collection and verification of the facts to be stated in the record; it should also be its duty, and it should be vested with power, to inspect and supervise the records and to enforce compliance with its requirements. Such a bureau might secure a collection of reliable statistical matter, uniform in quality throughout the state. Indiana is now, it is believed, the only state in the Union where such a bureau exists.

Not the slightest reflection can be cast upon the federal census bureau; on the contrary, when consideration is taken of the fragmentary and chaotic state records with which the census bureau had to deal, the systematic and orderly results and the general deductions embraced in the census report of 1904 must be regarded as a signal scientific triumph.

One exceedingly common and popular error needs special mention; a marked increase in the number of convictions for crime indicates to the public mind an increase necessarily in the volume of crime committed. In fact, it may be owing to increased activity and efficiency on the part of the police and detective officers, to greater severity and thoroughness in the administration of the courts, to a change in the economic conditions of the community, to diminished care and skill on the part of offenders in escaping detection; indeed, there are many possible factors that may have combined to produce an unusual statistical result. A slight change in the laws or methods of procedure, may cause startling statistical fluctuations.

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