On criminal statistics; especially with reference to population education and distress in Ireland

Abstract

In the session of this Society in 1860-61,I availed myself of the admirably arranged returns of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, to bring before the Society some of the aspects of crime in this city, especially in regard to education, and from the facts adduced in the paper then read I pointed out what appeared to me to be the direction which efforts towards the diminution of crime should take. "By resisting the continued influx of country pauperism into the large towns, by exerting actively the legal powers of enforcing sanitary regulations; by discouraging the demoralizing crowding together of the poor in close and filthy city habitations; by insisting upon the constant use of moral agencies in the education of the young, not mere school instruction, but systematic training in daily labour?by efforts tending to such ends (it seemed to me) crime must be diminished and society improved." No array of facts, no columns of figures need be marshalled to carry conviction to most minds of these truths. But, baffled at times to find the true causes for the results which statistics seem to present, at fault to know why, with a set of facts of one kind, another set of facts apparently consequent or necessarily co-incident are yet not traceable; baffled, at fault, as to all we would know, through insufficient information or deficient intelligence, yet there never fails to be found enough to keep us in heart for warring on against ignorance and against idleness.