CRIME IN" VICTORIA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 273, 24 April 1873, Page 3

CRIME IN" VICTORIA.

("South Australian Chronicle.")

Crime is largely on the decrease in Victoria. There were not so manypersons taken into custody, summarilydealt with before the Magistrates, or convicted and sentenced in the Supreme Covet in 1871 as in 1862. At both ends of the decade the account stands thus : — With an increase of population from 504,000 in 1862 to 721,000 in 1871, the persons taken into custody in 1862 were 25,006, against 22,000 in 1871 j the persons whose cases were summarily disposed of before the Magistrates were 15,110 in 1862, against 15,064 in 1871 ; and the number of persons convicted and sentenced in the Supreme Court in 1862 were 688 against 478 in 1871. This is doubtless attributed to the habits of the people having become more settled, the improvement in this respect not being confined to the country districts, where there are fewer loafers roaming about than there were formerly, but also have extended to the larger towns, Melbourne not excepted. There were fewer cases of drunkenness, that great source of crimes in Victoria in 1871 than in 1862, the number in 1871 being only 1,093, against 7,449 in 1892. But there was a large increase in the drunk and disorderly characters during the same period, the drunk aud disorderlies in 1871 being 8,875, against 2,346 in 1892, so that taking the two classes of cases together, they would be about equal at both ends of the decade, the population in the meantime having increased between 26 and 30 per cent. The absurd way in which every petty case of crime is paraded and exaggerated in some of the newspapers, the evening papers in particular, mi^ht lead to a different conclusion, but the foregoing figures are taken from the official statistics of the colony. It is quite time an end was put to this, but we have no reason to expect it so long as the tendency co imitate the Amei'ican papers is maintained, and people take a delight in the " sensational." Without a good dash of the latter, one half of the second, or third-class papers, wonld not sell.