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Page 19
Is it economic? It is sometimes asserted that the increase of crime in
the summer months is due to the large number of tramps who leave the
workhouses after the winter is over and roam the country in search of
employment. Many of these wanderers, it is said, are arrested for
vagrancy; in summer they swell the prison population just as they
swell the workhouse population in winter. This explanation of the
increase of crime in summer contains so many elements of probability,
that it has come to be rather widely accepted by students of criminal
phenomena. It has not, however, been my good fortune to meet with any
facts or statistics of sufficient weight to establish the validity of
this explanation. As far as I can ascertain it is an explanation which
has obtained currency almost entirely through its own intrinsic
probability; it is believed, but it has not been proved. Let us
proceed to put it to the test. For this purpose we shall select the
county of Surrey--a fairly typical English county, composed partly of
town and partly of country. In the county of Surrey during the month
of July, 1888, sixty per cent. fewer persons were imprisoned for
vagrancy than in the following month of January, 1889. As far as
Surrey is concerned, these figures effectually dispose of the idea
that vagrancy is more common in summer than in winter; as a matter of
fact they demonstrate that the very opposite is the case. Surrey is
the only county for which I have been able to obtain trustworthy
statistics, but there is every reason to believe that the statistics
of Surrey reveal on a limited scale what the whole of England, if
figures were procurable, would reveal on a large scale. Assuming,
then, that what holds good for Surrey is equally valid for the rest of
England, the conclusion is forced upon us that the augmentation of
crime in summer does not arise from an increase of vagrants and others
arrested and convicted under the Vagrancy Acts while in search of work
or pretending to be in search of it. The assumption that such is the
case is quite unwarranted by the facts so far as they are obtainable,
and another explanation must be sought of the greater prevalence of
crime in summer as compared with winter.
An economic cause of an opposite character to vagrancy has by some
been considered as accounting for the facts now under consideration.
In the summer months, work as a rule is more easily procured; people
in consequence have more money to spend; drunkenness becomes more
common, and the high prison population of summer is to be attributed
to drink. That there is a greater consumption of drink when work
becomes more plentiful is a perfectly correct statement which has been
verified over and over again, and it is also equally correct to say
that drinking leads its victims to the police court. But it has to be
remembered that in almost all cases of drunkenness the magistrate
allows the alternative of a fine. A much larger percentage of fines
is paid in summer than in winter, the result being that the increase
of drunkenness in summer does not disproportionally increase the size
of the prison population. In July, 1888, as compared with January,
1889, cases of felony and assault, followed by imprisonment, increased
in the county of Surrey 20 and 28 per cent. respectively, while
drunkenness on the other hand only increased 18 per cent. The reason
of this relatively small increase of imprisonment for drunkenness does
not arise from the fact that there is less drunkenness in proportion
to the other forms of crime; it is owing to the greater facility with
which this offence can be purged by the payment of a fine. It is
more easily purged in this fashion in summer than in winter, because
people have more money in their pockets. Money, in short, acts in two
capacities which neutralise each other; on the one hand it brings more
persons before the magistrates on charges of drunkenness; on the other
hand, it enables more persons to escape with the simple penalty of a
fine. The prison population is, therefore, not unduly swollen in
summer by the undoubted increase in drinking during that season of the
year; drinking has, in fact, less to do with that increase than any
other cause.
The preceding observations on vagrancy and drinking will suffice to
show that as far as these two factors are concerned, the rise of the
prison population in the warm weather cannot be explained on economic
grounds. Are there any social habits which will account for it? Change
of seasons has a notable effect on social habits. In the cold days of
winter, the great mass of the population live as much as possible
within the shelter of their own home; as long as the short days and
the cheerless and dismal weather continue, there is little to tempt
them out of doors and to bring them into contact with each other. But
with the advance of spring this condition of things is changed; the
lengthening days, the milder atmosphere, the more abundant sunshine
offer increased facilities for social intercourse. Crowds of people
are thrown together, quarrelling and disorders arise, which call for
the interference of the police to be followed shortly after by a
sentence of imprisonment. The growth of international intercourse is
said to make for peace; the growth of social intercourse, admirable as
it is in many respects, has the unfortunate drawback of mating for
black eyes and broken heads. Admitting the truth of this serious
indictment against our social instincts, and no one can deny that it
does contain a considerable amount of truth, the fact still remains
that weather is indirectly if not directly the source from which the
increase of crime in summer proceeds. It is the good weather that
multiplies occasions for human intercourse; the multiplication of
these facilities augments the volume of crime; and thus it comes to
pass, that the conduct of society is, at least, indirectly affected by
changes of season and the oscillations of temperature.
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