Temperance Column.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 198, 3 May 1902, Page 1

Temperance Column.

[advertisement.]

o < (Published by arrangement) DRINK AND CHIME IN SCOTLAND. ColorW McHardy, C. 8., at a-meeting of the Scottish Society of. Economists held in Edinburgh, rend an interesting paper on " The Statistics of Crime in Scotland, and the Cost to the State." Colonel •jVleTTardy is chairman of the Scottish Prison Commissioners, and his figure* may therefore be taken as authoritative. They related to the year 1900, during which the police of Scotland dealt with 16(3,000 cases, involving about 180,000 criminals. Allowing for repented of tha same culprit, he said it might be takon that 142,000 different individuals were proceeded against, This " was the highest total for twenty yoars. The most numerous charges were as follow:—Breach of the peice. (14,000 drunkenness, 44,000; and theft, 13,000 Colonel Mellardy added that for oflendcr of the lower classes imprisonment had IOBt its terrors, as the prisons were far more comfortable than their own squuli.l abodes, and the average length of simple imprisonment did ndt now exceed fifteen days. During 1900 the amount of money received in fines and forfeited pledges was £50,000. He charged the bulk of Scottish criminality to drunkenness, and said that he believed that if intemperance could be cured the prison population would collapse. It was found (hat not more than 6 per cent of the prisoners were teetotallers. Colonel Mellardy also laid stress upon the necessity or proper training for children. At present, even if they reformed every man and woman in custody, they would have a fresh crop of about 15,000 prisoners next year. Some discussion followed the reading of the paper, and in replying to k, Colonel Mellardy said that the nu.nk'r of Irishmen in Scottish prisons -.;■ s difficult to collate, but, as far as he could make out, it constituted about a third of the whole. It was the person, described as a "labourer," but who did not labour, who affected the prison returns. When this person got money into his hands he did not kuow how to use it, and it was a faet that he was the dominant feature of a prison. The class of respectable artisans was as fine a class as could be got, and whether their wages were raised or lowered it made no difference upon the prison returns. lie believed it was the case that sjrious crime was slightly decreasing. If Scotland could not get rid, of its "drunks" it would have the finest recv'd upon tho face of the globe.— Daily Times.